Survey of antibiotic use among hospitalised children in a hospital in Northeast China over a 4-year period.

PURPOSE: We investigated the usage of antibiotic utilisation rate (AUR) among Chinese hospitalised children over a 4-year period to determine clinical characteristics. DESIGN AND METHODS: AUR, antibiotic type and antibiotic use in combination were analysed among hospitalised children of the affiliated hospital of Beihua University in Northeast China from January 2015 to December 2018. The linear prediction was used to investigate the trends of antibiotics use in combination and AUR, and autoregressive integrated moving average model was used to predict AUR in 2019. RESULTS: A total of 2,981 inpatients were admitted to the hospital during the study period. The AUR from 2015 to 2018 was 91.51%, 92.67%, 91.30%, and 93.00%, respectively. AUR was associated with season (p < .01), the peak period was found to be from November to January in 2019 (R2 = 0.802). The etiological delivery rate had increased (p < .01). Pneumonia was the main disease in children for which they received antibiotics. The combination of multidrug (≥3 agents used) had increased (p < .01) over the study period. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: AUR was stable among hospitalised children in a hospital. Cephalosporin and macrolide antibiotics were the main antibiotic types, and the combination of multidrug had increased, more attention should be paid to the use of antibiotics in hospitalised children.