Etimicin sulfate is a new drug developed by the institute of Microbiology of Jiangsu Province, China. Invitro antibacterial activity showed that it had good activity against clinical isolates. In order to compare its efficacy and safety of two aminoglycoside antibiotics-etimicin and netilmicin in the treatment of bacterial infections, a randomized open labeled controlled multicenter clinical trial was conducted for the treatment of 243 hospitalized patients with respiratory tract infection, urinary tract infection, skin and tissue infections. The dosage of both drugs was 100 mg every 12 hours by intravenous infusion. The duration of treatment was 7~ 10 days in both groups. In the randomized controlled study, 122 patients were enrolled in etimicin group, 106 patients were assessable for safety and 103 patients assessable for efficacy while 121 patients were enrolled in netilmicin group, 102 patients were assessed safety and 101 patients assessed efficacy. The results showed that the overall efficacy rates were 87.4% for etimicin group and 87.l% for netilmicin group, whereas the bacterial efficacy rates were 86.7% and 87.6%, the bacterial clearance rates were 89.9% and 89.7%, respectively. The incidence of adverse reaction was 8.5% and 8.8%, respectively. The results showed that there was no statistical difference between two groups (P>0.05).