Quantifying topical antimicrobial use before and during participation in an antimicrobial stewardship programme in Dutch companion animal clinics

In this project we collected antimicrobial prescription data from 44 Dutch companion animal clinics from July 2012 until June 2018. The dataset contains monthly prescription and clinical animal population data on topical antimicrobial use (AMU) in dogs, cats and rabbits from the companion animal clinics. The study period was divided in two periods; the pre-intervention period (July 2012-June 2015) and the intervention period (March 2016 - June 2018) when clinics participated in an antimicrobial stewardship programme (ASP). As quantification metric, the Defined Daily Dose for Animals (DDDA) was used and a mixed effect times series model with auto-regression was applied to monthly topical AMU data. The aim of the present study was to quantify topical AMU in 44 Dutch companion animal clinics before and during their participation in an ASP, to explore the effect of participating in the ASP on topical AMU.