Importance: Although overall antibiotic use among dermatologists is decreasing, there has been an increase in use associated with dermatologic procedures during the past decade. This higher antibiotic use may increase antibiotic-associated adverse events and promote the development of antibiotic resistance.
Objective: To characterize antibiotic use associated with dermatologic procedures, including geographic variation.
Design, setting, and participants: Using Optum Clinformatics DataMart deidentified commercial claims data, we performed a repeated cross-sectional analysis of antibiotic prescribing by dermatologists from 2008 to 2016. Dermatology clinicians were identified by their National Uniform Claim Committee taxonomy codes, encounters for surgical procedures were identified by Common Procedure Terminology codes, and courses of oral antibiotics prescribed by these clinicians were identified by their National Drug Codes.
Exposures: Claims for oral antibiotic prescriptions associated with encounters with dermatologists associated with dermatologic procedures.
Main outcomes and measures: Frequency of antibiotic prescribing and associated procedures. Poisson regression models were used to assess for changes in the frequency of antibiotic prescribing over time.
Results: Between 2008 and 2016, among 1 934 633 encounters (1 128 244 unique patients, 854 072 [44.1%] were women and the median [interquartile range] age was 66 [52-76] years) for dermatologic procedures, oral antibiotic prescribing associated with benign excisions increased from 2.9% to 4.4% of visits (52.5% relative change; incidence rate ratio [IRR], 1.04; 95% CI, 1.03-1.04), antibiotic prescribing associated with malignant excisions increased from 4.2% to 6.3% of visits (49.5% relative change; IRR, 1.06; 95% CI, 1.05-1.06), and antibiotic prescribing associated with Mohs surgery increased from 9.9% to 13.8% of visits (39.7% relative change; IRR, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.03-1.04). There was greater than 2-fold variation in antibiotic prescribing rates across geographic census divisions. If higher prescribing divisions were to develop antibiotic prescribing rates similar to lower prescribing divisions, antibiotic use could be decreased by over 50%.
Conclusions and relevance: Oral antibiotic prescribing by dermatologists associated with benign excisions, malignant excisions, and Mohs surgery is increasing over the past decade and there is substantial geographic variation. These findings highlight that there may be opportunities to optimize antibiotic use associated with dermatologic procedures.