Drug Utilization Pattern in Cardiovascular Diseases in a Community Cardiac Hospital

Abstract

Introduction: Drug utilization research is the powerful exploratory tool to ascertain the role of drug in determining the therapeutic efficacy, cost effective and minimizing the adverse effects. Cardiovascular diseases are major health problem and a common cause of premature morbidity and mortality.
Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study was carried out among in-patients diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases at acommunity cardiac hospital for a period of two months. Patients’ records forms and the medical cardexwere reviewed. The descriptive statistics were calculatedusing Microsoft Excel 2016.
Results: Out of 201, 101 (50.25%) patients were females. Seventy four (36.82%) patients were from age group of 61-80 years and 56(27.86%) had systemic hypertension. A total of 2677 drugs were prescribed in 201 patients. The average number of drug per prescription was 13.49. Out of 201, 105 (52.24%) patients were prescribed four or more drugs. Cardiovascular drugs were the most commonly prescribed (898, 33.54%) out of which diuretic drugs were the most common (189, 21.04%) followed by antiplatelet drugs (145, 16.14%) and anticoagulants (116, 12.91%). The highest percentage of cost of medication for patient were less than 1000 NPR (27.86%). The number of encounter of Aluminium hydroxide plus Aspirin was the highest (25).
Conclusion: Diuretics were the most common prescribed cardiovascular drugs in our study. Polypharmacy was practiced in majority of the patients. The highest probability of causing of drug-drug interaction was encountered with aspirin.