Background and objective: The noncompliance of treatment guidelines by healthcare\nprofessionals, along with physiological variations, makes the pediatric population more prone to\nantibiotic prescribing errors. The present study aims to evaluate the prescribing practices and errors\nof the most frequently prescribed antibiotics among pediatric patients suffering from acute\nrespiratory tract infections who had different lengths of stay (LOS) in public hospitals.\nMethods: A retrospective, cross-sectional study was conducted in five tertiary-care public hospitals\nof Lahore, Pakistan, between 1 January 2017 and 30 June 2017. The study population consisted of\npediatric inpatients aged 0 to 9 years. Results: Among the 11,892 pediatric inpatients, 82.8% were\nsuffering from lower acute respiratory tract infections and had long LOS (53.1%) in hospital.\nPenicillins (52.4%), cephalosporins (16.8%), and macrolides (8.9%) were the most frequently\nprescribed antibiotics. Overall, 40.8% of the cases had antibiotic prescribing errors related to wrong\ndose (19.9%), wrong frequency (18.9%), and duplicate therapy (18.1%). Most of these errors were\nfound in the records of patients who had long LOS in hospital (53.1%). Logistic regression analysis\nrevealed that the odds of prescribing errors were lower in female patients (OR = 0.6, 95% CI = 0.1-\n0.9, p-value = 0.012). Patients who were prescribed with less than equal to 3 antibiotics per prescription (OR = 1.724,\n95% CI = 1.1-2.1, p-value = 0.020), had long LOS\n(OR = 12.5, 95% CI = 10.1-17.6, p-value < 0.001), and were suffering from upper respiratory tract\ninfections (URTI) (OR = 2.8, 95% CI = 1.7-3.9, p-value < 0.001) were more likely to experience\nprescribing errors. Conclusion: Antibiotics were commonly prescribed to patients who had long LOS.\nPrescribing errors (wrong dose, wrong frequency, and duplicate therapy) were commonly found in\ncases of lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs), especially among those who had prolonged stay\nin hospital.
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