Drug Promotional Literature – A Critical Appraisal in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in Eastern India

Abstract

Drug promotional literatures (DPLs) are pamphlets or brochures printed by various pharmaceutical companies in order to promote the sale of products manufactured by them. DRPs can be highly informative and may contribute to practice of evidence-based medicine if it provides the true information including important drawbacks and if they are considered after critical analysis and review. But in most of the cases, they are misleading. Therefore, DPLs have to be critically analyzed for their content to prevent irrational prescribing pattern. This study was carried out to critically analyze the information content of drug advertisements in drug promotional literature available to the Medical Practitioners. Collected DPLs were assessed as per the WHO guidelines. Other additional analysis was also done such as whether cost was mentioned or not, validity, credibility and year of reference to scientific literature and picture or flowchart printed on the DPL. The data collected was summarized form using Microsoft Excel 365. Descriptive analysis was done to analyze and compare the data using percentages. A total of 543 DPLs were collected out of which only 393 were analyzed as per our inclusion and exclusion criteria. 213 (54.20%) DPLs were based on single drug formulation while 180 (45.80%) DPLs were on FDC. Drugs acting on cardiovascular system, antidiabetics and antimicrobials were among the top three groups of promoted drugs, indicating that drug companies are targeting diseases that are widespread. Approximately 70% of DPLs met only half of WHO's criteria for rational drug promotion. Based on the observations of this study, it is recommended that clinicians should be aware of the shortcomings in promotional literature before accepting it as source of valid information. When using drugs, especially new drugs on patients, the clinician should carefully analyze the results of research and draw conclusions, since misleading and incorrect information is now often found in promotional literature.