Table 2.
Antibiotic use among infants admitted to neonatal units in England and Wales (2010–2017)
| All gestational age groups |
Extremely preterm (< 28 weeks) |
Very preterm (28–31 weeks) |
Moderate to late preterm (32–36 weeks) |
Term (≥ 37 weeks) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number prescribed antibiotics at least once | 423,918 | 17,245 | 40,113 | 136,753 | 228,807 |
| Length of stay (days) | 7 (1–527, 3–18) | 86 (1–527, 63–110) | 44 (1–419, 33–58) | 13 (1–407, 6–20) | 4 (1–309, 3–7) |
| Number of different antibiotics per infant | 2 (2–2, 1–17) | 5 (3–6, 1–17) | 3 (2–4, 1–14) | 2 (2–2, 1–12) | 2 (2–2, 1–13) |
| Number of days on antibiotics per infants | 3 (2–5, 1–305 | 18 (9–32, 1–305) | 6 (3–12, 1–223) | 3 (2–5, 1–188) | 3 (2–5, 1–183) |
| Proportion of care days on antibiotic(s) (%) | 60 (26–100, 1–100) | 27 (17–47, 1–100) | 15 (10–26, 1–100) | 31 (18–60, 1–100) | 100 (63–100, 1–100) |
| Number who received at least one course* | 136,859 | 15,073 | 22,167 | 34,132 | 65,487 |
| Number of courses* per infant | 0 (0–1, 0–16) | 2 (1–3, 0–16) | 1 (0–1, 0–15) | 0 (0–0, 0–10) | 0 (0–1, 0–11) |
All figures are median (IQR, range)
*Antibiotic course: antibiotics prescribed for at least 5 consecutive days. If there was a gap of ≥ 2 days between stopping and re-starting antibiotics, they were counted as two courses