title: Drug utilization study in medical emergency unit of a tertiary care hospital in north India.
abstract: Objective. To generate data on the drug utilization pattern and cost of drug treatment and to determine the rationality of prescriptions. Methods. A retrospective cross-sectional drug utilization study was conducted in the medical emergency unit of our hospital. Patient case records were reviewed to extract data on the pattern of drug use. Cost of drug treatment for the emergency visit was calculated by referring to the cost mentioned in Monthly Index of Medical Specialties and the rationality of prescriptions was evaluated using WHO core indicators of drug utilization. Results. 1100 case records were reviewed. Majority of patients received proton pump inhibitors followed by multivitamins. The median cost per prescription was 119.23$ (7.32$-7663.46$). Majority (49.9%) of drug cost was driven by antibiotics alone. An average of 4.9 drugs was prescribed per prescription. There were 14.89% encounters with antibiotics. 75.17% of the drugs were given as injectables and only 29.27% of the drugs were prescribed as generics. Conclusion. There is need to rationalize the drug therapy in terms of increasing prescribing of drugs by generic name and to avoid overuse of PPIs and multivitamins in emergency unit. Also the hospital pharmacy should be encouraged to procure more cost effective alternative antibiotics in future.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160012, India.
authors.forename: Sharonjeet
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kaur
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160012, India.
authors.forename: Sujit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rajagopalan
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160012, India.
authors.forename: Navjot
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5179-0773
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kaur
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160012, India.
authors.forename: Nusrat
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1829-8701
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Shafiq
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160012, India.
authors.forename: Ashish
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bhalla
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160012, India.
authors.forename: Promila
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pandhi
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160012, India.
authors.forename: Samir
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Malhotra