Assessment of drug utilization pattern in patients undergoing chemotherapy for various types of metastatic cancers in a tertiary care government hospital

Abstract

Background: Cancer is one among main causes of morbidity and mortality in developing and developed countries. The World Cancer Report 2014 of World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), states that in 2012 the global incidence of cancer increased to a 14 million new cases, the figure expected to rise to an annual 19.3 million by 2025. The prescription pattern of anticancer drugs has evolved considerably in recent years because of better understanding of underlying pathophysiology of carcinomas as well as introduction of newer drugs. Methods: It was a hospital-based prospective, cross-sectional study conducted in Department of Oncology, GGH, Kakinada for a period of twelve months from February 2017 to January 2018. A total of 100 patients were enrolled using convenience sampling technique. Patient demographics like age, gender, educational level, employment status, marital status, smoking category, alcohol consumption, stage of cancer was collected. Drug utilization pattern was obtained from inpatient case reports, prescriptions and medication charts used during a chemotherapy cycle.Results: Among all anticancer drugs, cisplatin and 5-flurouracil were most commonly prescribed followed by Adriamycin. The most commonly used adjuvant drugs were B-complex, diclofenac, granisetron, ranitidine, dexamethasone. Antibiotic use was found to be very limited.Conclusions: Various anticancer drug prescription patterns are being used for treatment of patient with metastatic cancers. In this study, cisplatin and 5-flurouracil were commonly used. Injudicious antibiotic prescribing was not observed.