A Retrospective Drug Utilization Study on Psychiatric Illness in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Psychiatric disorders are now widely recognized as a major contributor to the global burden of disease. It has been described that there is an increased risk of adverse effects when more than one psychotropic drug is prescribed. Knowledge of the pattern of utilization of drugs in the general population can be achieved through the conduct of drug utilization studies. The present study has therefore been conducted to observe the pattern of drug use in psychiatry patients in a tertiary care hospital. Aim and Objective: To assess the epidemiology of various psychiatric illnesses among the study population To assess the Prescribing Pattern of drugs in Psychiatric Illness. To assess the drug-drug interactions in the prescription using MICROMEDEX. Methodology: A retrospective descriptive observational study was performed in a tertiary care hospital. A total of 100 prescriptions were collected from MRD.  Results: The study reported that 66% of patients were males and 34% were females. The average number of drugs and psychotropic drugs per prescription is six and four respectively. Around 61.98% of drugs in the prescription are psychotropic drugs, among that 40.17% of benzodiazepines are majorly used, followed by 34.27% of antipsychotics. Almost 95 prescriptions had a minimum of one drug-drug interaction.  The average number of psychotropics per prescription was higher than in studies. The average number of drugs per prescription was 5.84, which lead to polypharmacy. Conclusion: Using WHO indicators prescription analysis was done and it showed some deviation from the standard value which can be improved. Polypharmacy was noted in this study. Most of the drug is prescribed in the brand name which should be avoided.