A Study on Antibiotic Utilization in Pediatric Hospitalized Patients and Antibiotic Stewardship

Background: There is an increasing trend of use of antibiotics in pediatric ward/intensive care unit has resulted in increasing health care costs and the emergence of resistant bacteria. Objective: We evaluated the utilization of antibiotics in a pediatric teaching hospital aiming to identify targets for improvement of prescription. Methods: Clinical, laboratory and treatment data of patients hospitalized in patient department (IPD) and a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) were prospectively collected during a 6-months period. A subsequent review of the collected data by a pediatric infectious disease specialist, taking into consideration existing in-house treatment guidelines, was carried out. Results: Most common age group receiving antibiotics are between 1-5 years of age. Ceftriaxone alone and in combination with other antibiotics was most commonly prescribed (71.4%). Average number of antibiotics per patient was 1.2 and 70 % of patients were on single antibiotic. Conclusion: The most cause of hospitalization in our set up is due to gastrointestinal diseases and the antibiotics used frequently is ceftriaxone. It is high time for continuous education of doctors on judicious antibiotic use and strict implementation of existing guidelines for it. Improvement in the availability of rapid diagnostic methods to discern viral from bacterial infections may help reduce the numbers of empiric therapies in favor of pathogen-targeted therapeutic treatments