European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

STUDY OF PRESCRIBING PATTERN OF ANALGESICS AMONG SURGICAL INTERVENTION IN-PATIENTS OF A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL, IMPHAL

Dr. Neerajkumar Sharma Manohar, *Prof. Oinam Joychandra Singh, Dr. Anuradha Maibam, Dr. Senorita Pukhrambam, Takhellambam Manjushree

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Pain therapy during the management of patients particularly in the surgery & its allied branches is a crucial task for the analgesic prescribers and also depend on their experience. Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate the prescribing pattern of analgesics and to identify the commonly used analgesic. Method: Data was collected from 525 case sheets of surgical in-patients for a period of 1 year. Collected data included age, sex, diagnosis, name of drugs, route of administration, duration of hospital stay and cost of treatment. Descriptive statistics was used for analysis of data. Result: The average number of analgesics was 1.74. The maximum number of patients was in the age group of 31-40 years. Paracetamol was the most commonly prescribed analgesic 412(45%).168 patients received monotherapy. 74.42% patients received intravenous analgesics. 83.28% analgesics were from the NLEM out of which 23.39% analgesics were generic drugs. The average cost of treatment per patient per day using branded drugs was Rs.442 and generic drugs was Rs.16.31. The most common co-prescribed drugs were PPI (50.6%) for prevention of GIT problems and antibiotics (19.7%) for prevention of infections. Discussion: Pain therapy is individualized. Paracetamol is the most common analgesic which is administered parenterally during acute phase and orally when the pain is tolerable. The route and frequency of 412 units Paracetamol was 95% i/v and 15% orally respectively. The prescribers desired to prescribe the branded analgesics (76.61%) more than the generic analgesics (23.39%). 83.28% of the analgesics prescribed also belonged to NLEM and the expenditure was also low for the treatment with generic analgesics (Rs.16.31). These were co-prescribed with PPI (50.6%) and antibiotics (19.7%). Conclusion: A wide and extensive awareness program for the rational use of medicines through CME is needed so as to improve the prescription pattern and also to have a cost-effective pain therapy by utilizing the generic drugs from the NLEM.

Keywords: Prescription, Analgesic, Pain, Paracetamol, Generic, NLEM.