The prescribing pattern of drugs in pediatric patients of a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

Worldwide infants and children represent a higher proportion (28%) of the population. The rational use of medications for infants and children is a worldwide concern, and is therefore prominent among heath care professionals. The present study was carried out to evaluate the current drug usage pattern in pediatric patients of teaching hospital in south India. Methods: A prospective observational study was carried out on 100 subjects executed for six months. Data were collected from patient case sheet and analyzed for the WHO indicators and drug interactions. Results: The gender distribution of the 100 evaluated patients in the study were; 45 female and 55 male. The mean age was found to be 4 years (range: 0–12). Average hospital stay of study population was 5 days. The distribution of various diseases in study population were CNS (5),anemia (13), respiratory system (15), infectious diseases (57), fever (10) and other diseases (9).  Most of the study population diagnosed with infectious diseases. The study population most frequently prescribed with antibiotics (50.7%). Ceftriaxone and paracetamol were the leading prescribing drugs. Average number of drugs per prescription was 3.9. The drugs prescribed by generic name were 18.7 %.The average consultation time was found to be 6.2 minutes. The average numbers of parental, antimicrobial and total drugs costs per prescription were 165,176 and 201(INR) respectively. The study population contains 12 minor and 32 moderate drug interactions.Conclusions: Our study highlighted some rational prescribing practices a lower dispensing time and higher consulting time resulting in knowledge of correct doses and hence of improved compliance. Some areas of concern were polypharmacy, higher antimicrobials cost, higher rate of antibiotics prescribing, prescribing by brand names and no hospital formulary.