Prescribing patterns and economic costs of proton pump inhibitors in Colombia / Patrones de prescripción y costos económicos de inhibidores de bomba de protones en Colombia

ABSTRACT

Objective:To determine the prescribing patterns for protonpump inhibitors and to estimate the economic cost of their usein a group of patients affiliated with the Colombian Health Sys-tem.Methods:This is a descriptive observational study. Data foranalysis consisted of prescriptions dispensed between October1st, 2010 and October 31st, 2010 and were collected from a sys-tematic database of 4.2 million members. Socio-demographicvariables were considered along with the defined daily dose,comedication, convenience of the indication for proton pumpinhibitor use and costs.Results:In this study, 113,560 prescriptions were dispensed in89 cities, mostly to women (57.6 percent) with a mean age of 54.4 ±18.7 years; the drugs were omeprazole (n=111,294; 97.81 percent),esomeprazole (n=1,378; 1.2 percent), lansoprazole (n=524; 0.4 percent),pantoprazole and rabeprazole. The indication for 87,349 of theformulas (76.9 percent) was justified and statistically associated withthe use of NSAIDs, antithrombotics, corticosteroids, anti-ul-cer, antibiotics and prokinetics. No justification was found for26,211 (23.1 percent) of the prescriptions, which were associated withantidiabetics, antihypertensives,hypolipidemics andothers(p <0.001). The annual justified cost was estimated to beUS$ 1,654,701 and the unjustified cost was estimated tobe U.S. $ 2,202,590, as calculated using the minimum re-ference prices.