An observational study to evaluate the prescription pattern of analgesics used in the perioperative period in a tertiary care hospital

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. There are limited observational prescription pattern studies of analgesics in perioperative period in tertiary care hospitals for which this study was carried out in orthopedic, general surgery, and plastic surgery departments. The primary aim was to study the prescription pattern of analgesics in the perioperative period with the secondary aim to study the specific use of opioids and pain relief using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS). METHODS: A total of 250, 250, and 100 patients were taken from orthopedic, general surgery, and plastic surgery departments, respectively. The analgesics commonly used in preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative period were observed. The use of opioids in the perioperative period, the number of fixed drug combinations used, the number of generic drug prescription, and pain relief postoperatively were also observed. The analysis was done using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Total analgesics prescribed were 1168, 117, and 369 in orthopedic, general surgery, and plastic surgery departments, respectively, and were maximum in the intraoperative period. Most commonly used analgesic in the preoperative and postoperative period was paracetamol and that in intraoperative period was fentanyl. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were mainly prescribed by the general surgery department in postoperative period. The amount of pain in postoperative period after treatment with analgesics was mild to moderate as per the VAS. CONCLUSION: This study revealed that in preoperative and postoperative period, the most common analgesic used is paracetamol. In the intraoperative period, maximum patients received fentanyl. Diclofenac is an established NSAID used in the management of acute and chronic pain states. In our study, we found that the usage of paracetamol was more than NSAIDs and the usage of opioid was maximum during intraoperative period.