Background
Dentists are high prescribers of antibiotics for both treatment and prevention of
infection, although there are few guidelines to aid clinicians. Given the worldwide
concerns about unnecessary use of antibiotics, there is a need for a better understanding
of dentists’ use of these drugs for antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) to prevent distant
site infections (i.e., infective endocarditis and prosthetic joint infection).
Objective
The aim of this study was to develop and implement an effective, self-reporting, cross-sectional,
survey instrument that optimized the response rate and maximized reliability and validity
for determining the beliefs and behaviors of a large and nationally representative
group of generalist and specialist dentists concerning their use of AP.
Study Design
A 15-question survey (58 items) was developed in a structured process by a multidisciplinary
team and configured for automated online dissemination to 3584 national Dental Practice-Based
Research Network (DPBRN; hitherto referred to as “Network”) practitioners. The implementation
phase consisted of 3 waves of greater than 1000 Network members. Additionally, 47
randomly selected dentists were surveyed twice to assess test–retest reliability.
Results
Of 3584 eligible Network members, 2169 (60.5%) completed the survey. The age and geographic
distributions of responders was similar to those of dentists in the 2019 American
Dental Association census. Furthermore, test–retest weighted kappa values for the
survey were acceptable (median 0.56; interquartile range 0.42–0.64).
Conclusions
We developed a highly structured survey with a high response rate and good reliability
that will allow us to obtain unique data on dentists’ beliefs and practices regarding
AP prescribing.
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 12, 2020
Accepted:
March 2,
2020
Received in revised form:
January 23,
2020
Received:
October 11,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
