Abstract:

Background information: Prevention of surgical site infections (SSI) drive high antibiotic use in surgical wards that could consequently lead to development of antibiotic resistant, adverse drug reaction and over use of hospital patient resources. Optimising antibiotic use is a necessary step towards combating antibiotic resistant, therefore this study intends to report antibiotic consumption in defining daily dose per 100 bed-days (DDD/100BD) for regional referral hospital surgical ward to aid tailoring of antibiotic stewardship program in our setting.

Methodology: This is retrospective study. It captured antibiotic information for surgical inpatient from patient file for the period October 2019 to September 2020. Information extracted included demographic information, days of hospitalization and antibiotic prescription information.

Results: Of 343 eligible surgical inpatient file included in this study, 77.3% (265/343) were male and 22.7% (78/343) were female. Antibiotics were indicated to 83.1% (285/343) of patient for a mean duration of 3.29+ 2.34 days. One antibiotic was indicated to 17.5% (50/285), two antibiotics 69.8% (199/285), three antibiotics 8.4% (24/285), and four antibiotics 3.7% (11/285) and five antibiotic 0.4% (1/235) surgical patient. Antibiotic consumption for the ward was 36.97 DDD/BD. Metronidazole (16.37DDD/100BD) Ceftriaxone (13.61 DDD/100 BD) were most consumed antibiotics. October 2019 had highest consumption (61.1 DDD/100BD) and June 2020 had lowest antibiotic consumption (18.4 DDD/100BD).

Conclusion: Antibiotics are highly consumed in surgical ward empirically as sensitivity test were almost not performed. Additionally, antibiotics are indicated for more than recommended duration among surgical inpatient. There are high antibiotic consumption variations at the ward with no logical pattern observed.