Epidemiological distribution and drug utilization study in patients with respiratory tract diseases at district general hospital Amravati, Maharashtra, India

Abstract

In the present study we have focused on the trends in the Epidemiological distribution and drug utilization in respiratory tract diseases. A cross sectional and observational study conducted in both in-patient and out-patient department of District General Hospital, Amravati. The institutional ethical committee of Government college of Pharmacy, Amravati authorised this study. After obtaining verbal consent, patient demographics and drugs prescription data were collected and analysed. Along with this interaction with the patients were also done whenever required. Data obtained was analysed using convenience sampling, a non-probability sampling method and entered in Microsoft excel. A total of 184 patients were observed in our study of which 63.58% were males and 36.42% were females. From all the prescriptions, we observed that there were 923 medicines prescribed in 184 prescriptions with an average of 5.1 medicines per prescription In this paper, we observed how the drugs are utilized by the physician and most commonly prescribed drugs in RTD. From this study, it is evident that antibiotics were not prescribed in majority of patients and is a matter of serious concern. Prescribing by generic names has to be encouraged with patient counselling for cessation of smoking, alcohol and tobacco consumption.