ArticleJournal of Korean medical science2023
Antibiotic Prescription in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019: Analysis of National Health Insurance System Data in the Republic of Korea.
Article in Journal of Korean medical science, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Antimicrobial stewardship programs in sepsis treatment: principles, impact, and future directions.The Korean journal of internal medicine · 2026Review
- In-hospital antimicrobial use and multidrug-resistant infections among COVID-19 patients in Northern Malaysia (COVAM): a multicentre study.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2026Article
- Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency Infectious Disease Big Data: Opening, Integration, Outcomes, and Future Directions.Jugan geon-gang gwa jilbyeong · 2025Article
- Changes in Antimicrobial Resistance in Pediatric Urinary Pathogens Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Comparative Safety of Empirical Antibiotic Classes in Newly Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Article
- [Introduction to the Research Results of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Big Data (K-COV-N) and the Corresponding Utilization Plan].Jugan geon-gang gwa jilbyeong · 2024Article
- Preoperative COVID-19 and Postoperative Mortality in Cancer Surgery: A South Korean Nationwide Study.Annals of surgical oncology · 2024Article
- Comparative Epidemiological and Clinical Outcomes on COVID-19 and Seasonal Influenza Hospitalized Patients during 2023.Infectious disease reports · 2024Article
- Nationwide Analysis of Antimicrobial Prescription in Korean Hospitals between 2018 and 2021: The 2023 KONAS Report.Infection & chemotherapy · 2024Article
- Evaluation of Serial Procalcitonin Levels for the Optimization of Antibiotic Use in Non-Critically Ill COVID-19 Patients.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Comparative Analysis of Clinical Outcomes Using Propensity Score Matching: Coronavirus Disease 2019 vs. Seasonal Influenza in Korea.Journal of Korean medical science · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a viral infection, antibiotics are often prescribed due to concerns about accompanying bacterial infection. Therefore, we aimed to analyze the number of patients with COVID-19 who received antibiotic prescriptions, as well as factors that influenced antibiotics prescription, using the National Health Insurance System database.
methodsWe retrospectively reviewed claims data for adults aged ≥ 19 years hospitalized for COVID-19 from December 1, 2019 to December 31, 2020. According to the National Institutes of Health guidelines for severity classification, we calculated the proportion of patients who received antibiotics and the number of days of therapy per 1,000 patient-days. Factors contributing to antibiotic use were determined using linear regression analysis. In addition, antibiotic prescription data for patients with influenza hospitalized from 2018 to 2021 were compared with those for patients with COVID-19, using an integrated database from Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency-COVID19-National Health Insurance Service cohort (K-COV-N cohort), which was partially adjusted and obtained from October 2020 to December 2021.
resultsOf the 55,228 patients, 46.6% were males, 55.9% were aged ≥ 50 years, and most patients (88.7%) had no underlying diseases. The majority (84.3%; n = 46,576) were classified as having mild-to-moderate illness, with 11.2% (n = 6,168) and 4.5% (n = 2,484) having severe and critical illness, respectively. Antibiotics were prescribed to 27.3% (n = 15,081) of the total study population, and to 73.8%, 87.6%, and 17.9% of patients with severe, critical, and mild-to-moderate illness, respectively. Fluoroquinolones were the most commonly prescribed antibiotics (15.1%; n = 8,348), followed by third-generation cephalosporins (10.4%; n = 5,729) and beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitors (6.9%; n = 3,822). Older age, COVID-19 severity, and underlying medical conditions contributed significantly to antibiotic prescription requirement. The antibiotic use rate was higher in the influenza group (57.1%) than in the total COVID-19 patient group (21.2%), and higher in severe-to-critical COVID-19 cases (66.6%) than in influenza cases.
conclusionAlthough most patients with COVID-19 had mild to moderate illness, more than a quarter were prescribed antibiotics. Judicious use of antibiotics is necessary for patients with COVID-19, considering the severity of disease and risk of bacterial co-infection.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.