We assessed antibiotic prescribing in practical dentistry in the Czech Republic, as antibiotics are widely prescribed by dental practitioners and warning signals of their overuse can be observed. The individual antibiotic prescriptions were extracted from the database of the General Health Insurance Company and further analysed. The proportion of dentists' prescription within the whole primary health-care sector and the rate of prescriptions of particular antibiotics were both in defined daily doses per 1,000 insurees and day (DID) and in number of prescriptions calculated. The proportion of antibiotic use in dentistry increased from 0.63 DID in 2006 to 0.75 DID. We found a decline in use of narrow-spectrum penicillins by 4.8%, tetracyclines by 3.5% and macrolides by 3.6%, accompanied by increasing rate of prescription of aminopenicillins combined with beta-lactamase inhibitor by 8.9% and lincosamides by 8.5%. The consumption of clindamycin and amoxicillin combined with clavulanate in DID has increased by approximately 60% since 2006 thanks to the exclusive prescribing of two commercial oral products only. Factors contributing to this unfavourable trend are commercial influence or defensive medicine practice.

• Keywords
• General dental practitioners, antibiotics, database study, prescribing,
• MeSH
• Anti-Bacterial Agents therapeutic use   MeSH
• Databases, Factual MeSH
• beta-Lactamase Inhibitors MeSH
• Clindamycin therapeutic use   MeSH
• Amoxicillin-Potassium Clavulanate Combination therapeutic use   MeSH
• Penicillanic Acid analogs & derivatives   therapeutic use   MeSH
• Drug Prescriptions statistics & numerical data   MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Lincosamides therapeutic use   MeSH
• Macrolides therapeutic use   MeSH
• Metronidazole therapeutic use   MeSH
• Penicillins therapeutic use   MeSH
• Health Care Sector statistics & numerical data   MeSH
• Tetracyclines therapeutic use   MeSH
• General Practice, Dental statistics & numerical data   MeSH
• Check Tag
• Humans MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
• Geographicals
• Czech Republic MeSH
• Names of Substances
• aminopenicillanic acid MeSH Browser
• Anti-Bacterial Agents MeSH
• beta-Lactamase Inhibitors MeSH
• Clindamycin MeSH
• Amoxicillin-Potassium Clavulanate Combination MeSH
• Penicillanic Acid MeSH
• Lincosamides MeSH
• Macrolides MeSH
• Metronidazole MeSH
• Penicillins MeSH
• Tetracyclines MeSH