3.1 Characteristics of the patients
Eight NICUs (6 level III NICUs and 2 level II NICUs, comprising 1
children’s hospital, 2 maternal and child health hospitals and 5
comprehensive hospitals), including 6 of the 17 NICUs we contacted and 2
NICUs who contacted us, participated in the retrospective, multicenter
study. In total, 2051 newborns admitted to the participating hospitals
were sampled and enrolled, 1770 of whom were evaluable and 281 were
excluded due to incomplete demographic data (10 neonates) and
unqualified prescriptions (271 neonates) (Table 1). Among the evaluable
patients, 1035 (58.47%) were male and 735 (41.53%) were female. The
mean body weight was 2.98 kg (SD = 0.80, range 0.78-6.0) and the
majority of patients (68.14%) resulted to be the normal body weight
(2.5~<4.0 kg). Of the patients, 41.52% were
diagnosed with suspected/proven infections, followed by gastrointestinal
diseases (25.88%) and respiratory diseases (7.57%). Intravenous
injection was the most common route of administration, accounting for
73.11% of all the prescriptions, followed by oral administration
(11.89%) and intramuscular injection (10.39%).