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clinmed/2002060002v1 (July 26, 2002)
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Patterns of prescription and drug use in a psychiatry out-patient department in a teaching hospital in western Nepal
Ravi P Shankar, Samit Roy, and Nagesh Shenoy
Aims: To find drug use patterns among out-patients attending the psychiatry OPD of Manipal teaching hospital, Pokhara, Nepal. Methods: The diagnosis, duration of treatment, drugs prescribed, strength, frequency, duration of treatment and the cost of prescription were analyzed in 239 patients. An attempt was made to relate prescription data to the age and sex of the patients. Results: Mean ± SD drugs per prescription was 1.55 ± 0.79 for men (n=115) and 1.89 ± 0.81 for women (n=124). 71.3% of the drugs were prescribed by brand names and the mean ± SD cost of drugs per prescription was 52.56 ± 43.45 Indian rupees. The prescribing frequency of antidepressants, anxiolytics, antipsychotics and antimania drugs were 45.94% (187/407), 19.41% (79/407), 8.6% (35/407) and 1.96% (8/407) respectively. Women were prescribed more antidepressants than the men. No clear trends were noted in prescribing frequency of drugs was observed. Conclusions: The issue of prescribing by brand names needs to be addressed. Studies on patient compliance and dropout rate from treatment are urgently required
