A decade of antibiotic use in a teaching hospital.

A survey of the antibiotic agents that are being prescribed for inpatients in St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, has been carried out annually since 1976. This article describes the patterns of prescribing that were observed between 1976 and 1986 with special emphasis on the results since 1980, which was the year before the adoption of the hospital's antibiotic policy. The proportion of hospital inpatients who received antibiotic therapy as determined by prevalence studies varied from 25%-36%. Since the introduction of the antibiotic policy, 61%-70% of antibiotic courses were administered for the treatment of infection and 30%-39% of the courses were administered as prophylaxis. Amoxycillin and ampicillin were prescribed most frequently, followed by the cephalosporin agents and the other penicillins. In the area of the empirical treatment of infection, compliance with the hospital antibiotic policy improved and reached 76% of courses in 1986. In the area of prophylaxis, compliance improved a little and stood at 21% of courses in 1986.