Benefits of a Pediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship Program in Antimicrobial Use and Quality of Prescriptions in a Referral Children's Hospital

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the results of the first 24 months of a postprescription review with feedback-based antimicrobial stewardship program in a European referral children's hospital. STUDY DESIGN: We performed a pre-post study comparing antimicrobial use between the control (2015-2016) and the intervention periods (2017-2018) expressed in days of therapy/100 days present. Quality of prescriptions was evaluated by quarterly cross-sectional point-prevalence surveys. Length of stay, readmission rates, in-hospital mortality rates, cost of systemic antimicrobial agents, and antimicrobial resistance rates were included as complementary outcomes. RESULTS: Total antimicrobial use and antibacterial use significantly decreased during the intervention period (P = .002 and P = .001 respectively), and total antifungal use remained stable. A significant decline in parenteral antimicrobial use was also observed (P