Assessing the Ayurvedic prescribing trends on the basis of WHO drug use indicators

BACKGROUND: Ayurvedic prescriptions are often challenged for their rationality. Excessive use of proprietary medicines, rasa preparations, and samshodhana without any justification and deliverable benefits outweighing the other forms of safer, cheaper and less time consuming therapies is putting the Ayurvedic prescribing trends into question. In Ayurvedic practice, prescriptions are often individualized with substantial variability between the choices of drugs. Although being welcomed as an advanced approach of prescription writing by making it tailor made, this method also allows for lapses to creep in thus making it necessary to check common trends of prescribing in Ayurveda and to see whether it raises any caution. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to create a check for common trends of prescribing in Ayurveda and to see if such checks raise any caution. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Present study utilizes the WHO drug use indicators as a preliminary tool for analyzing Ayurvedic prescriptions. RESULTS: It was found that with a small modification, this tool can help immensely in screening of Ayurvedic prescriptions. CONCLUSION: Based on the results obtained through this study, it can be concluded that the WHO drug use indicators, with a small modification, can help in identifying the prescribing trends in Ayurveda and can also help in suggesting remedial measures in case certain anomalies are found.