Antibiotic Prescription Patterns for Hospitalized Children Under 12 Years in a Tertiary Referral Teaching Hospital, Kerman, Iran

 Inappropriate prescriptions of antibiotics in children is common in most parts of the world.

 This study was performed to evaluate antibiotic prescription patterns and the rational use of antibiotics in hospitalized children in a tertiary referral hospital in Kerman, Iran.

 This prospective cross-sectional study evaluated prescription patterns of antibiotics for hospitalized children under 12 years old for six months from October 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018. Demographic information, including age, sex, most commonly-prescribed drug classes, name of antibiotic, duration and route of administration, diagnosis, and results of microbial culture and duration of hospitalization were recorded.

 Most antibiotics were administered by parenteral route. The major infections for which antibiotics were prescribed were febrile seizures (34.4%), upper respiratory infections (25.5%), pyrexia with unknown origin (17.6%), and urinary tract infections (14.8%). Ceftriaxone, clindamycin, and vancomycin were the most frequently prescribed antibiotics. The selection of 84% of antibiotics was on an empirical basis. Ampicillin (83.9%) and clindamycin (81.0%) showed the highest resistance rate, followed by ceftriaxone (33.0%) and vancomycin (32.0%).

 Our results showed inappropriate use of antibiotics in hospitalized children. A relatively high resistance rate to prescribed antibiotics for children indicates that the selection of high-cost antibiotics, including ceftriaxone, vancomycin, and meropenem should be based on antimicrobial sensitivity tests.