Drug utilization pattern at the cardiac surgical outpatient clinic in a tertiary care hospital at Goa

Abstract

Background: Drug utilization research encourages rational drug prescribing practices and thus contributes to the contemporary use of drugs in the society. This study assesses the drug utilization pattern (DUP) at the cardiac surgical outpatient department of Goa Medical College hospital. We used the World Health Organization (WHO)-prescribing indicators to analyze the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) implementation as recommended in the National Drug Policy. Methods: We used a cross-sectional study design to analyze the DUP. We randomly selected 103 prescriptions dispensed to patients at the cardiac surgical outpatient during the study period. We critically examined these prescriptions for their consistency with WHO core drug use indicators. Results: The average number of drugs prescribed per person was 4.95. The most commonly prescribed top three drugs were antiplatelets (21.46%), beta-blockers (14.76%), and statins (13.78%). Most drugs were prescribed as single drugs (90.98%), whereas 9.02% were fixed-dose drug combinations (FDC). The combination of aspirin and clopidogrel was the most common prescribed FDC. The majority (72.44%) of the drugs prescribed were as per the NLEM 2015 list, whereas the generic name was low (2.8%). We measured Patient-Care Indicators and Facility-Specific Indicators also. The average consultation time and dispensing time were 7.76 and 3.23 min, respectively. The in-house pharmacy dispensed 82% of drugs. 93.75% of the key drugs were available in the facility. A copy of the essential drugs list was readily available in the facility. 96.67% of the patients knew the correct dosage of drugs. Conclusions: Anti-platelets and statins were the most commonly prescribed drugs. There was a high prescribing trend from the NLEM; however, the inclination to prescribe generic names was less. Patient-care and facility-specific indicators were also far from the optimal values except that of the average dispensing time.