Drug utilization pattern in South Indian pediatric population: A prospective study

BACKGROUND: Studies on the process of drug utilization focus on factors related to prescribing, dispensing, administering and taking of medication and its associated events. AIMS: The aim of this study is to assess the prescribing patterns of medicines, apply the World Health Organization (WHO) core indicators and to assess the appropriateness of prescribed medicines in a pediatric unit. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A prospective observational drug utilization study was carried out in a pediatric unit of a super specialty hospital in South India for a period of 9 months. Patients who attended the pediatric unit with the age newborn to 18 years were included in the study and patients who were not willing to participate in the study were excluded and the data collected from the pediatric unit were analyzed. RESULTS: Out of 209 patients, the average number of drugs per patient was 4.56. The percentage of drugs prescribed with the generic name was found to be 19.16%. Among 209 prescriptions 49.78% of the drugs were essential drugs. Among the antibiotics 33.33% prescribed, cephalosporin group were the most commonly prescribed followed by amino glycoside and penicillin. Nearly, 21.80% of the medicines were given as intravenous and the prescriptions without drugs were 1.43%. Only 75.6% of patients have knowledge about their dosage schedule and almost all the prescriptions were appropriate. CONCLUSION: The assessment of WHO core indicators helped to improvise the prescribing pattern, identify significant problems involved in the knowledge gap of patients or caretakers understanding of instructions provided by consultants and even to minimize the cost burden on patient.