ABSTRACT
Background: The domain of psychiatric illnesses is grossly underrepresented in the current health care scenario especially due to overreliance on mortality rather than the morbidity or dysfunction. The field of psycho-pharmacology is witnessing constant development and introduction of new drugs for which holistic utilization, effectiveness, and side effects studies are the need of the hour. In addition, inappropriate use of drugs poses a potential hazard to patients. Our current study aims at studying the morbidity pattern of various psychiatric ailments and focuses on the prescribing trends of psychotropic drugs.Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted in psychiatry out-patient department of a tertiary care hospital for a period of 12 months. Prescription pattern of psychotropic drugs was analyzed using predesigned format. Prescriptions were collected from OPD and hospital pharmacy. Prescriptions were analysed as per WHO indicators for prescriptions. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis.Results: Depression was found to be the most common psychiatric disorder encountered (32.6%). Average number of psychotropic drugs prescribed per patient 2.45±1.013. Antidepressants along with BZD were the most frequently prescribed psychotropic drugs in various psychiatric disorders. Among the total of 2445 psychotropic drugs prescribed, 99.98% were oral formulations. Psychotropic fixed dose combinations were present in 1.68% of the prescriptions. Only 28% of medicines were prescribed by generic names. Utilization of drugs from the WHO’s 18th list of essential medicines of India was 29%. PDD of risperidone was 1.57mg in schizophrenia. Escitalopram, resperidone and propranolol were the most commonly prescribed drugs for mood disorders, schizophrenia and anxiety respectively.Conclusions: The concomitant use of two psychotropic drugs was the preferred therapy. FDC of anti-cholinergics with both typical and atypical antipsychotics were used. Benzodiazepins were significant part of therapy.
ABSTRACT
Background: Irrational prescribing of medicine results in serious morbidity and mortality as well as additional economic burden and also lead to reduction in the quality of treatment; thereby causing wastage of resources, increased treatment cost, increased risk for adverse drug reaction, and emergence of resistance. WHO has generated indicators in three main drug use areas; prescribing, patient care, and facility specific factors. Methods: This study was carried out with the aim of identifying prescription pattern of antibiotics and evaluates the rationality of prescriptions in accordance with WHO prescribing indicators. 300 prescriptions were examined from the inpatient department (IPD) of a tertiary care teaching hospital from the Department of Medicine, Surgery, and Orthopedics. The IPDs were visited twice a week. Each prescription was followed for the duration of 5 days. The prescribing and dispensing details from each prescription were recorded in a tabular form as mentioned in data acquisition form. The data were analyzed as per the WHO core drug use indicators. Results: This study clearly highlights the practice of polypharmacy, low uses of generic drugs, injudicious usage of antibiotic, and injection and low usage of the drug prescribed from essential drug list. Conclusions: Multi-faceted interventions are required at many levels for the benefits of the community in the form of continued medical educational programs, consumer awareness, formation of hospital formulary, and undergraduate clinical pharmacology and therapeutics teaching.