Study of prescribing pattern of drugs in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in tertiary care teaching hospital in India

Abstract

A widespread potentially preventable disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has been a serious public health problem in this decade, and is one of the main causes of mortality and morbidity in developed and emerging nations. Irrational use of medicines is a major problem in current clinical practice; more than half of all pharmaceutical items are administered, illegally dispensed. It was a retrospective research aimed at examining the practice of prescribing drugs in patients with pulmonary disease. The research was performed at Sun Shine tertiary care teaching Hospital, Hyderabad, India in 154 patients of either sex confined to the general and pulmonary medicine departments over six months from June 2019 to December 2019. For the 154 population of the study male participants were more (77.92 percent) and most patients were from the 58-68 year age group (46.75 percent). Smoking has been found to be more prominent in the sample population (40.25 per cent). In COPD treatment, bronchodilators were mainly prescribed class of drugs (39.384 percent) followed by antibiotics (30.90 percent). In most prescriptions, salbutamol was administered with budesonide combination therapy. The much more common co-morbidity was hypertension (12.98 per cent). The prescriptions for generic drugs were found to be low (1.51 per cent drugs). The report found that our hospital provided symptomatic treatment for patients with COPD. This has chosen combination therapy over monotherapy. Bronchodilators were amongst COPD patients the most recommended class of medications. Both patients were administered antimicrobial therapy. Everything prescriptions contain polypharmaceutical. COPD diagnosis lacked spirometry.