Prescription of antimicrobial drugs to hospitalized children

OBJECTIVE: To analyze with regard to age, gender, and diagnosis, the profile, frequency of prescribing, and cost of antimicrobial drugs (AMDs) in hospitalized children. DESIGN: Retrospective study of medical records of children hospitalized during 1987 and 1988. SETTING: First Pediatric Clinic, Children's Teaching Hospital, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). PATIENTS: One thousand randomly selected hospitalized children. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Patterns of AMD prescribing. Consumption is expressed by the number of drugs and cost per child. RESULTS: AMDs were prescribed to 69.9 percent of the patients (average 1.91 per patient). Ampicillin was the drug most frequently prescribed (20.0 percent), followed by oxacillin (12.8 percent). The mean length of stay was 15.9 days. An average of 3.61 drugs from other pharmacotherapeutic categories were prescribed per patient. Most children who received AMD treatment were in the 1-year group (patients between six months and 1.5 years of age [88.6 percent]). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides an overview of the prescribing of AMDs and other drugs in hospitalized children in Bratislava.