Abstract: Objective To study the antimicrobial susceptibility of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from children with infectious skin diseases in Beijing area and to investigate the prevalance of community- acquired methicillin-resistant S. aureus （MRSA）. Methods S. aureus was isolated from 600 outpatients with infectious skin diseases in Beijing Children′s Hospital. The susceptibility of these isolates to 14 antimicrobial agents was determined by agar dilution method according to the guidelines from Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute （CLSI）. Results Totally, 451 S. aureus strains were isolated. Of them, 93.8% were resistant to penicillin, 87.6% to erythromycin, 71.6% to clindamycin, 37.3% to tetracycline, 13.3% to chloramphenicol, 6.4% to gentamicin, 1.6% to oxacillin, 2.2% to ciprofloxacin, 0.4% to cefazolin, 0.2% to cefuroxime and mupirocin. No resistance was found to vancomycin, ceftriaxone or fusidic acid. Conclusions The results suggest that penicillin and erythromycin are no longer the appropriate agents for the treatment of S. aureus. The prevalance of MRSA is 1.6% in children with infectious skin diseases in Beijing area. Oxacillin and cephalosporin are recommended for systemic treatment of community acquired MRSA, and mupirocin or fusidic acid for its topical treatment.