Abstract

The irrational use of antimicrobials leads to a number of consequences in term of cost, drug interactions, hospital stay and bacterial resistance, and a substantial economic burden on health care systems. This study aimed to investigate the pattern of antimicrobial use among hospitalized patients. The treatment-charts for 384 inpatients admitted to the major wards (medicine, surgery, pediatric and gynecology) in the teaching hospital and receiving antimicrobials were reviewed for the period from February to May 2016. The enrolled patients were observed from admission till discharge. Descriptive statistics were applied to the collected data and institutional ethical committee approval was obtained prior to the study. The majority of patients were females (52.86%), their age from 1 to 16 years (59.63%). The common diagnosis for patients was respiratory tract infections (30.21%) followed by gastrointestinal infections (19.53%). Ceftriaxone (50.52%) was the top most frequently used antimicrobials followed by ampicillin (37.50%), cefotaxime (16.15%), cefuroxime (15.89%), metronidazole (11.72%) and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (5.99%). The majority of the admitted patients (63.54%) received two or more antimicrobials. 45.4% of physicians confirmed the influence of drug companies and their drug promotion on their antimicrobial prescribing. The evidence of high prescribing rate of ceftriaxone in the presence of other available, low-price and suitable antimicrobials reflected irrational prescribing and this may be responsible on developing resistance against ceftriaxone and other cephalosporins.

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