OBJECTIVES:The growing emergence of bacterial resistance is related to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.The aim of this study was to evaluate the prescribing of antibiotics by Montenegrian primary health care (PHC) practitioners in the treatment of the most common infections. METHODS:We used the computerised report that was extracted from the Information system named ''The Control of Distribution and Use of Drugs'' that has been established within The Republic Health Insurance Fund since 2003. The report covered ATC code, generic name, number of defined daily doses that were prescribed during 2005 and the diagnoses of infections (International Classification of Diseases-ICD) for which antibiotics were prescribed. Our results were expressed as number of DDD/1000 inhabitants/day (DTID). RESULTS: The prescribing of antibiotics was highest for the treatment of acute upper respirstory tract infections (URTI, ICD codes J00-J04) (7.9 DDDs), acute bronchitis (J20) (1.7 DTIDs) and cystitis (N30) (1.1 DTIDs). For the treatment of URTI amoxicillin had the highest prevalence (2.7 DTIDs, 34%). Amoxicillin with clavulanic acid was the second drug (1.4 DTIDs, 17%) and narrow-spectrum penicillin V was the third (0.8 DTIDs, 10%). Acute bronchitis was treated mostly by macrolides azitromycin (0.4 DTIDs, 23%) and erythromycin (0.3 DTIDs, 19%), followed by amoxicillin (0.3 DTIDs, 17%). Sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim was most common prescribed antibiotic for the treatment of cystitis (0.4 DTIDs, 37%), cefalexine was the second drug (0.3 DTIDs, 25%) and ciprofloxacin (0.2 DTIDs, 15%) was the third.CONCLUSION: This survey showed a slight tendency of Montenegrian PHC physicians to more frequently prescribe wide-spectrum (and more expensive) antibiotics. They also prescribed antibiotics in some diagnoses where It was controversal and wasn't supported with strong clinical evidence. Further studies about patterns of bacterial resistance to antibiotics and pharmacoeconomic aspect of pharmacotherapy are needed to fully estimate is the prescribing of antibiotics rational or not.