A Study on Prescribing Pattern of Cephalosporins in Paediatric Department of Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Worldwide, infants and children represent a higher proportion of the population.28 % of the worlds total population is accounted by children younger than 15 years of age. Several studies focusing on prescribing practices of antibiotics among the hospitalized children indicate that approximately 35 % of infants and children who are admitted to hospitals receive antibiotics. Surveys showed that 2265 % of antibiotic prescriptions are either inappropriate or incorrect based on clinical and economical criteria, resulting in an increased incidence of side effects, higher costs and higher rates of antimicrobial resistance in community pathogens. Cephalosporins are the most commonly used group of antibiotics in hospitals and health care facilities around the world. This study was conducted to evaluate the prescribing patterns of cephalosporins in a paediatric population of a tertiary care teaching hospital. This was a prospective observational study conducted for a period of 6 months (October-March 2019) in the paediatric population of CSI Holdsworth Memorial (Mission) Hospital after being approved by the Institutional Humans Ethics Committee of Farooqia College of Pharmacy, Mysore. A total of 120 paediatric patients received cephalosporins. Ceftriaxone was the widely prescribed cephalosporin (88.70 %) for the most common indication being respiratory tract infections (21.16 %) and for majority of the patients between the age group of 0-1 year (37.50 %). The most commonly prescribed ceftriaxone dose, frequency of administration and mean duration of treatment was found to be 500 mg (17.59 %), twice daily (65.74 %) and 2.75 days (range 1-8 days) respectively. The drug-drug interactions were identified (29.83 %), which included 13.51 % major, 81.08 % moderate and 5.40 % contraindications. Marginal irrationality (10.48 %) was found with dose and frequency. The drug-drug interactions were identified and the inappropriateness in terms of dose and frequency of administration was found in the prescribed cephalosporins. The study findings demonstrated clinical pharmacist intervention in the drug therapy to resolve and prevent drug-related problems in paediatric population.