Assessment of Antibiotics prescription in Hospitalized Patients at Elobeid Hospital, Sudan

Objective: This study aimed to assess the pattern of antibiotics usage in medical wards at Elobeid teaching hospital, West Sudan.Patients and method: This is a descriptive hospital-based study. The data were retrospectively collected from the patient’s records. Systemic random sampling was used to select 427 patient’s records from the records of patients who were admitted to the medical wards in the year 2008. Therecords of 250 patients showed antibiotic prescription constituting 58.5% of the selected records. Beside the sociodemographic data, drug data (drug name, drug strength, route of administration and duration of therapy), basis of prescription (empirical or definitive) and other relevant informationwere collected from the patient’s records and analyzed.Results: A total of 427 patient’s records were selected for the study, out of which 250 (58.5%) for whom one or more antibiotic was prescribed were studied. Males were 60% of the patients. The mean age ± SD of the patients was 50 ± 21 years. The total number of prescribed antibiotics was397 drugs. Cephalosporins constituted more than one third (34.5%) of the prescribed antibiotics, and penicillins 28.5%. The mean number of antibiotic ±SD prescribed for each patient was 1.6 ± o.95 drugs. 148 (37.2%) of the drugs were prescribed in generic name. In 52 (13%) drugprescriptions, the drug strength was not written. In the majority of the records (92.9%), the duration of drug therapy was not stated. Parenteral route of drug administration was prescribed for 50.8% of the antibiotics. The most commonly prescribed antibiotics were ceftriaxone, amoxycillin-clavulanic acid combination, benzyl penicillin (penicillin G), ciprofloxacin, cefuroxime, and metronidazole. Conclusion: The empirical prescription of antibiotics is a common practice at Elobeid Teaching Hospital; therefore establishment of antibiotics guideline based on local epidemiological data of potential pathogens and their pattern of antibiotics susceptibility should be available.Key words: Antibiotics, hospitalized patients, medical ward