title: Measurement of drug use in a defined population. Evaluation of the defined daily dose (DDD) methodology.
abstract: To evaluate the accuracy of the DDD per 1000 inhabitants per unit time as an estimate of the fraction of drug users within a population, DDD figures have been compared with the proportion of apparent drug users, i.e. individuals in the population for who a prescriptions had been dispensed. An individual-based prescription monitoring project provided the necessary data for eight drugs representing continuous long-term medication, short-term medication and medication falling in between those two categories. For digoxin, the long-term drug, the number of DDD/1000 inhabitants/day was about 40% below the proportion of apparent drug users. The DDD figure for antibiotics ranged from 4% below to 28% above the apparent users, and for the remaining drugs it ranged from 17% below (bendroflumethiazide, 1982) to 80% below (naproxen, 1985). The DDD methodology is a valuable first step in overall drug use measurement, but for more precise estimates of drug use it must be supplemented by other techniques.
authors: National Corporation of Pharmacies, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Wessling
authors: G
authors: G
authors: Boëthius
mesh_terms: D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004363:Drug Utilization / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000008:administration & dosage; D013548:Sweden
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations