This is an author version of the contribution published on:
Questa è la versione dell’autore dell’opera:
Veterinary Record, volume 169, issue 5, 2011, DOI: 10.1136/vr.d4813
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http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/169/5/134.2.full?
Correct use of antibiotics?
Henri-Jean Boulouis; Sarah Caney; Jean-Pierre Cotard; Gilles Dupré: Anna Maria Farca; Jacques Fontaine; Manfred Kietzmann; Françoise Leblanc and Roman Lechowski.
REQUEST Group, c/o Jan-Cedric Hansen, Secretary, StratAdviser, 2nd Floor, Berkeley Square House, London W1J 6BD
e-mail: jc.hansen@stratadviser.com
The REQUEST Group comments: When nine European veterinarians met together three years ago, they didn't have the faintest idea of what would come out of the meeting. They knew only that too many self-endorsed ‘spokespersons’ were asserting what should be the proper use of fluoroquinolones among companion animals without any clear rationale. The objective of the meeting was to appraise the available literature on the use of fluoroquinolones among companion animals and to find out what would come out of this. Three years later, the REQUEST group is still here. We have had six formal public working sessions hosted by several European veterinary universities, namely Lyon, Vienna, Edinburgh, Torino, Maisons-Alfort and Liége; the next session will take place in Warsaw.
We developed some methodological tools – because none was available – to rate veterinary publications covering not only clinical studies but susceptibility and pharmacokinetic studies as well. We adapted a human recommendation grading scale to match the veterinarian specificity. We designed a composite index to assess the different fluoroquinolones according to prescribers' needs. We appraised more than 400 publications regarding fluoroquinolones among companion animals. We presented our methodology and preliminary results in numerous national and international symposia and congresses in Europe, including the World Small Animal Veterinary Association congress in 2010. We currently have a number of primary publications about to enter the peer-review process and guidelines released or in the process of being released.
All this work is dedicated to a more responsible use of fluoroquinolones by prescribers because we believe that this is the only way to control the selection and spread of resistant strains.
We do not interfere with the decision to prescribe or not; this decision belongs to the prescriber. What we intend to do with the guidelines is provide the best evidence-based information on how to prescribe fluoroquinolones in a given situation (after the prescriber has made his/her decision). Our position is clear and this statement is the first line of all our guidelines: ‘When intending to prescribe fluoroquinolones among [species] with typical clinical signs of [diagnosis] … ’.
This work would not have been possible without sponsors; Vétoquinol is one of those. To ensure that sponsors do not influence our work, a independent third party acts as secretary of the group.
