ArticleBMC primary care2024
Point-of-care testing and antibiotics prescribing in out-of-hours general practice: a register-based study in Denmark.
Article in BMC primary care, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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
5 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- Out-of-hours C-reactive protein point-of-care testing and its association with long-term healthcare-seeking.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2026Article
- Task shifting from general practitioners to nurses in out-of-hours primary care: an explorative case study of team-based practices.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2025Article
- Point-of-care C-reactive protein testing in general practice out-of-hours services: tool or trap?The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Article
- Article
- Oral Antibacterial Drug Prescribing in Primary Care Out-of-Hours Services: A Scoping Review.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPoint-of-care testing may reduce diagnostic uncertainty in case of suspicion of bacterial infection, thereby contributing to prudent antibiotic prescribing. We aimed to study variations in the use of point-of-care tests (C-reactive protein test, rapid streptococcal antigen detection test, and urine dipstick) among general practitioners (GPs) and the potential association between point-of-care testing and antibiotic prescribing in out-of-hours general practice.
methodsWe conducted a population-based observational register-based study, based on patient contacts with out-of-hours general practice in the Central Denmark Region in 2014-2017. The tendency of GPs to use point-of-care testing was calculated, and the association between the use of point-of-care testing and antibiotic prescribing was evaluated with the use of binomial regression.
resultsOut-of-hours general practice conducted 794,220 clinic consultations from 2014 to 2017, of which 16.1% resulted in an antibiotic prescription. The GP variation in the use of point-of-care testing was largest for C-reactive protein tests, with an observed variation (p90/p10 ratio) of 3.0; this means that the GPs in the 90th percentile used C-reactive protein tests three times as often as the GPs in the 10th percentile. The observed variation was 2.1 for rapid streptococcal antigen detection tests and 1.9 for urine dipsticks. The GPs who tended to use more point-of-care tests prescribed significantly more antibiotics than the GPs who tended to use fewer point-of-care tests. The GPs in the upper quintile of the tendency to use C-reactive protein test prescribed 22% more antibiotics than the GPs in the lowest quintile (21% for rapid streptococcal antigen detection tests and 8% for urine dipsticks). Up through the quintiles, this effect exhibited a positive linear dose-response correlation.
conclusionThe GPs varied in use of point-of-care testing. The GPs who tended to perform more point-of-care testing prescribed more antibiotics compared with the GPs who tended to perform fewer of these tests.
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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.