Study of antimicrobial use in paediatric inpatients in a tertiary care hospital in Ahmedabad, India

Abstract

Background: Inappropriate use and overuse of antibiotics are important factors leading to increased bacterial resistance apart from increased risk of adverse reactions. The aim of this study was to derive antibiotic use percentage, study its pattern and compare antibiotic prescribing indicators with standard indicators.Methods: This prospective observational study was conducted from 1st August 2018 to 31st July 2019 on paediatric inpatients from 1 month to 14 years. All the relevant data was taken from the case records of patients at the time of discharge. The data included: age, sex, hospital stay, clinical diagnosis and details of antimicrobial treatment.Results: From 989 patients, 85.9% were diagnosed with infectious illness, of which 60.1% had viral and 36.7% had bacterial infection. The use of antimicrobial drugs was 42.7% and antibiotics was 40.4%. The mean number of antibiotics received was 1.13±0.31. 90% patients received single antibiotic. 88.8% drugs were prescribed by generic name and 99% drugs were prescribed from essential drug formulary. 17 different antibiotics were used out of which ceftriaxone (62.5%) was the most commonly used. Groupwise, antibiotic use was cephalosporins (68.4%), penicillin (20.2%), aminoglycosides (4.31%), fluoroquinolones (0.9%) and macrolides (0.22%). The use of higher antibiotics like vancomycin (3.86%) and carbapenems (0.68%) was quite less.Conclusions: The antibiotic use in our hospital was higher than the WHO standard but less as compared to majority of other studies. Use of cephalosporins was more and penicillin was less as compared to other studies. This suggests that there is a need of implementing antibiotic stewardship programs to enhance rational antibiotic prescribing.