Résumé
Background: Upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) are the most common and frequent occurring infections in the pediatric population. URTI is mostly viral in origin and requires mostly symptomatic treatment. The present study was undertaken to analyze the pattern of drug use in the management of URTI in the pediatric age group. Methods: It is a retrospective study to assess the pattern of drug use in URTI in pediatric outpatient department during the 5 months period from January 2015 to May 2015. Results: A total of 2256 prescriptions were analyzed. Most of the pediatric patients belonged to 1-5 years age group and 58.33% were males, and 41.66% were females. A total of 6332 drugs were prescribed out of which the antibiotics used was 1341. The average number of drugs per prescription used was 2.81. The percentage of prescriptions containing antibiotics was found to be 59.44%. Amoxicillin (70.91%) was the most frequent prescribed antibiotic followed by cotrimoxazole (10.21%). Antihistaminic and expectorant combinations were found to be the most common prescribed class of drugs (29.34%) followed by analgesic and antipyretics (26.45%) and antibiotics (21.17%). Conclusions: The study revealed that the majority of children were below 5 years of age. The most common class of drugs prescribed was antihistaminics and expectorant combinations followed by analgesics and antipyretics. Although the majority of the patients received antibiotics, 40.55% of patients received symptomatic treatment. This is a welcome step as inappropriate use of the antibiotics can potentiate to the increasing trend of antimicrobial resistance.
Résumé
Background: The main aim of this study is to find out the effect of valproic acid on platelet count and to know the possible risk factors for thrombocytopenia in patients taking valproate (VPA). Methods: On 72 patients having psychiatric indication, a longitudinal observational study was designed and conducted from February 2012 to July 2013 at Department of Psychiatry (out-patient department) of Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru Memorial Medical College and Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar Memorial Hospital, Jail Road, Raipur, Chhattisgarh. Platelet count was monitored and determined using an automatic coulter analyzer. The patients were followed up to 6 months. Statistical tool standard deviation ± was used for statistical analysis. p<0.05 is considered as statistically significant. Results: Total percentage of thrombocytopenia was found to be 12.5%; among that males constitute 9.8% and females 19.04%. The maximum number of cases falls in the age group between 51 and 60 years (55.5%). The major diagnostic group was reported to be consisted of mania (40.4%), followed by resistant cases of schizophrenia (25%) and then bipolar affective disorder (23.6%). The study indicated that maximum patients suffered from mild thrombocytopenia (11.1%) and (1.4%) patients have moderate thrombocytopenia. The mean time from exposure to VPA therapy to the first episode of thrombocytopenia was reported 92 days. Conclusions: Our findings underlined the importance of monitoring platelet counts in patients treated with VPA. This monitoring should be continued indefinitely on monthly basis. The studies indicate that the demands of more vigilant monitoring of patients should occur in age of 50-60 years, and result of entire studies indicates that females were found to be subjected to incidences of thrombocytopenia especially.