Objective To study the pathogens and their drug susceptibility of septic arthritis of hip in children. Methods Prior to the antibiotic treatment, pus was extracted for bacterial culture under aseptic operation. The pathogenic bacterium was identified and drug susceptibility was analyzed using a fully automated bacterial identification/drug susceptibility system. Results A total of 68 pathogens were isolated, in which 42 were Gram-positive bacteria, 23 were Gram-negative bacteria and 3 were fungi. The results showed differences in the bacterial types of hip septic arthritis in children with different ages (5 days to 13 years). For newborns (less than 1 month), the most common pathogen was Klebsiella pneumoniae; for the ages of 1 month to 13 years old, the most common pathogen was Staphylococcus aureus. The results of drug susceptibility tests showed that Gram-positive bacteria were highly susceptible to vancomycin, teicoplanin and linezolid;the resistance of Staphylococcus aureus to penicillin was up to 96％; and Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Haemophilus influenzae, Enterobacter cloacae and Salmonella were highly sensitive to meropenem and imipenem. Conclusion In the antimicrobial drug treatment of children with hip septic arthritis, the etiology sample should be collected for drug susceptibility analysis. Empirical drug therapy strategy should be applied in the absence of the analysis results. Sensitive antibiotic drug therapy should be used after obtaining reliable etiological diagnosis and drug susceptibility results, and simultaneously taking the age into consideration.