ABSTRACT
Background: Pediatric diarrhea is the second most common cause of childhood mortality globally. Despite being self-limiting, polypharmacy is rampant in their treatment. The adherence of practitioners to the recommended guidelines can be assessed by drug utilization studies. Aim and Objectives: The aim of the study was to assess the drug utilization pattern of acute diarrhea management in children. Materials and Methods: A prospective observational study was undertaken for 12 months at pediatric inpatient unit of BRIMS, Bidar. Prescriptions of 400 cases of acute diarrhea in children of either gender aged 1?12 years were evaluated for the pattern of drugs prescribing using the WHO core indicators. Results: The study showed male preponderance with 54.75% being males. Every prescription, on an average had five drugs for diarrheal management. About 43.5% prescriptions had at least two antibiotics. Out of a total of 2237 drugs prescribed, 1392 (62.2%) drugs were prescribed as injections. About 78.5% medicines were selected from the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), 2015 and 87.12% drugs were from the hospital formulary. Drugs were categorized as per ATC/DDD system using the WHO reference DDDs and ATC codes website. PDD to DDD ratio of majority of drugs was 0.99. Conclusion: We observed polypharmacy in practice for diarrheal illness in our study. Accentuation on evidence-based management and adherence to the treatment guidelines may help in improved and rational drug use in children.