Prescribing pattern of antipsychotic medications in patients with schizophrenia in a tertiary care hospital.

ABSTRACT

Background: The objective of thisstudy was to study the prescribing pattern of antipsychotic medications in patients with schizophrenia in a tertiary care hospital. Methods: An observational study was conducted in psychiatry outpatient department (OPD) of Bapuji and Chigateri hospital attached to Jagadguru Jayadeva Murugarajendra medical college, Davangere. The data collected, had information about age, gender, education, occupation, marital status and drug prescription that included trade name, generic name, dosage and frequency of administration of 100 outpatients who attended the psychiatry OPD. Results: A total of 100 prescriptions were analyzed of which 6% was monotherapy, where Asenapine was the only drug used and rest 94% was combination therapy. About 94% of the combination therapy included the use of single antipsychotic with anticholinergic drug and multiple antipsychotics with anticholinergic drug. A combination of multiple antipsychotics with anticholinergic was most commonly used, that is trifluoperazine and chlorpromazine (36%), followed by trifluoperazine and risperidone (13%), trifluoperazine and quetiapine (8%), risperidone and quetiapine (7%), trifluoperazine, chlorpromazine along with quetiapine (3%). Among single antipsychotic with anticholinergic, risperidone (20%) was most commonly used, followed by Trifluoperazine (7%). Use of the anticholinergic drug, Trihexyphenidyl accounts to 94% of the total prescriptions. Conclusions: Schizophrenia is mostly seen in males, middle age group and unemployed people. The present study showed that combination therapy is preferred for the treatment of Schizophrenia. Despite several side-effects, typical antipsychotics, especially trifluoperazine was the most commonly used drug, followed by chlorpromazine either alone or in combination. Among atypical antipsychotics, risperidone was commonly used followed by quetiapine and asenapine. Most of the patients received trihexyphenidyl, an anticholinergic drug along with antipsychotics to reduce extra pyramidal side-effects.