PRESCRIBING TREND OF FIXED DOSE COMBINATIONS (FDCs) IN A TERTIARY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL IN WESTERN INDIA
*Priti Dhande, Hardik Patel and Amit Gupta
ABSTRACT
Background: Fixed dose combinations are highly popular in the Indian pharmaceutical market and are particularly flourishing in the last few years. Today FDCs are in several thousands and many of them have no therapeutic rationale. Aim: This study was planned to screen the prescriptions in the outpatient department of a tertiary care teaching hospital to assess the status of prescribed FDCs. Methodology: This was a retrospective study conducted in the month of May 2013 in which OPD prescriptions were accessed from the hospital record section for presence of FDCs. Results: We observed 193 FDCs in 400 prescriptions during our study of which the most prescriptions were
from medicine (32%) and dermatology (20%) departments. Only 5.38% FDCs were from the 18th list (2013) of essential medicines (EML) by the WHO. Anti-inflammatory (27%) and nutritional supplements (23%) comprised of 50% of the total FDCs. Out of the total 55% irrational FDCs, 12% FDCs were unapproved and 19 combinations of Paracetamol had higher than recommended dose. Conclusion: FDCs are being rampantly prescribed by the physicians and even marketed by pharmaceutical companies without following World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for drug combinations.
Keywords: Fixed dose combinations, retrospective, prescriptions, unapproved FDCs.
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