Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Feb;45(2):231-233.
doi: 10.1017/ice.2023.118. Epub 2023 Aug 29.

Antibiotic waste in a pediatric healthcare system: Wasting drugs that are in limited supply

Lucie K Fan  1 , Lydia Lu  2 , Alfred J Fernandez  2 , Preeti Jaggi  2   3
Affiliations

Antibiotic waste in a pediatric healthcare system: Wasting drugs that are in limited supply

Lucie K Fan et al. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

In a pediatric hospital system over 2 years, 58,607 doses of antibiotic were wasted, an average of 80 doses per day, including drugs in shortage nationwide. Approximately 50% of waste occurred within the first 2 days of admission or the day of discharge, with ampicillin being the most wasted drug (N = 7,789 doses).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

All authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
List of the 23 most wasted antibiotics over the study period. Doses wasted on “admission” include those wasted on hospital day 1 or 2 and “discharge” is on the day of discharge.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Singh H, Eckelman M, Berwick DM, Sherman JD. Mandatory reporting of emissions to achieve net-zero health care. N Engl J Med 2022;387:2469–2476. - PubMed
    1. Quadri F, Mazer-Amirshahi M, Fox ER, et al. Antibacterial drug shortages from 2001 to 2013: implications for clinical practice. Clin Infect Dis 2015;60:1737–1742. - PubMed
    1. Gundlapalli AV, Beekmann SE, Graham DR, et al. Perspectives and concerns regarding antimicrobial agent shortages among infectious disease specialists. Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis 2013;75:256–259. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shafiq N, Pandey AK, Malhotra S, et al. Shortage of essential antimicrobials: a major challenge to global health security. BMJ Glob Health 2021;6:e006961. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gerber JS, Ross RK, Bryan M, et al. Association of broad- vs narrow-spectrum antibiotics with treatment failure, adverse events, and quality of life in children with acute respiratory tract infections. JAMA 2017;318:2325–2336. - PMC - PubMed

Substances