Cross-sectional Study On The Drug Utilization And Evaluation Indicator Of Antibiotics Used In Pediatric Patients

Background: The lack of medication standards is a serious problem in paediatrics mainly because of age-related differences in organ development and physiological functions in children.Consequently,dosage measurement becomes inaccurate.For this reason,methods for evaluating and monitoring rational paediatric medications should be developed.The focus of this study is to evaluate the use of pediatric antibiotics and to explore the role of pediatric drug use indicators such as drug use index and prescription daily dose in pediatric antimicrobial use research and their applicability to children.Methods: A total of 5,538 prescriptions of antibiotics were collected from pediatric inpatients in a general teaching hospital in Anhui province.Drug,dose,frequency and treatment duration were obtained from each prescription.The prescription daily dose(PDD)of each antibiotic drug was calculated as the average of the daily doses.Subuse and overuse were determined in terms of the PDD/DDD ratio for each prescription.Children’s DUI(c DUI)was explored in terms of the rationality of medication for children as follows: the meaning of children’s DDD(c DDD)and the evaluation of paediatric drug dosage.Results: Among the 5,538 prescriptions,10 types of infection,41 types of antimicrobial drugs,multiple infections and combination drugs were involved.The top five antibiotics and their utilisation rates were as follows: cefmetazole sodium injection(18.47%),erythromycin lactobionate injection(15.07%),amoxicillin/clavulanate potassium injection(10.72%),ceftriaxone sodium injection(9.50%)and azithromycin dry suspension(8.02%).There were 934 unreasonable prescriptions(16.87%),which were mainly manifested as drugs without obvious indications.The rationality of the prescriptions may be related to the gender,age,department and length of hospital stay of the patients.But the correlation coefficient of gender and the length of time are all less than 0.1,indicating that the correlation between them and the rationality of prescription is weak,so as to determine gender and length of stay may not be the main influencing factors,but department and age are.Conclusions: The use of antibiotics without definite indication has become a problem that should be paid special attention to in children.The establishment of pediatric drug use index system is an effective means of pediatric drug use evaluation.Therefore,in addition to the restricted daily dose for adults,pediatric drug use index and prescription daily dose(PDD)should be used to analyze pediatric drug use.