ArticleBMC health services research2021
Cross-sectional study on the drug utilization and evaluation indicator of antibiotics used in pediatric population.
Article in BMC health services research, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pediatric oral antihypertensive agents: analysis of prescription patterns and patient characteristics in a real-world study.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2026Article
- Antibiotic Exposure and Childhood Overweight/Obesity: Evidence from Epidemiological and Experimental Studies.Current pharmaceutical design · 2025Review
- Defined daily doses in pediatric dosing- a theoretical example.Pharmacology research & perspectives · 2023Article
- Appropriateness of antimicrobial selection for treatment of pneumonia in selected public hospitals of Eastern Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study.SAGE open medicine · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe lack of medication standards is a serious problem in paediatrics mainly because of age-related differences in organ development and physiological functions in children. Consequently, dosage measurement becomes inaccurate. For this reason, methods for evaluating and monitoring rational paediatric medications should be developed. Drug use indicators, such as those similar to the drug utilisation index (DUI) based on the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical/Defined Daily Dose (DDD) and widely used for the assessment of appropriate dosage in adults, should be explored in terms of their applicability to children.
methodsA total of 5,538 prescriptions of antibiotics selected from a general teaching hospital were included. Drug, dose, frequency and treatment duration were obtained from each prescription. The prescription daily dose (PDD) of each antibiotic drug was calculated as the average of the daily doses. Underdose and overdose were determined in terms of the PDD/DDD ratio for each prescription. Children's DUI (cDUI) was explored in terms of the appropriate dosage for children as follows: the meaning of children's DDD (cDDD) and the evaluation of paediatric drug dosage.
resultsThe top five antibiotics and their utilisation rates were as follows: cefmetazole sodium injection (18.47 %), erythromycin lactobionate injection (15.07 %), amoxicillin/clavulanate potassium injection (10.72 %), ceftriaxone sodium injection (9.50 %) and azithromycin dry suspension (8.02 %). The ratio of cDUI and PDD/cDDD was mostly not close to 1.
conclusionsThe establishment of a cDUI system is an effective means of paediatric dosage evaluation. In addition to DDDs, cDUI and PDD/cDDD should be used to analyse the utilisation of antibiotics in children.
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