DRUG UTILIZATION STUDY IN THE INDOOR WARD OF THE SURGERY DEPARTMENT IN MARKS MEDICAL COLLEGE & HOSPITAL, DHAKA, BANGLADESH

Iqbal Masud Khan*, Nishat Farhana Khan, Md. Zakir Hossain, Nabaneeta Sarker and Nayeem

ABSTRACT

Pharmacotherapy with multiple agents before, during and after surgery is marked in present day indoor hospital setting. The main objective of drug utilization research being to assess the rationality of drug use, the present study intends to evaluate the drug utilization patterns using WHO/INRUD indicators in the inpatient ward of the Gastro Intestinal Laparoscopic Onco Surgery department in Marks Medical College & Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and to assess how much it conforms to standard treatment guidelines. A descriptive, cross-sectional survey was conducted for 2 months in which 75 prescriptions were screened. In an average 6.27±1.31 (mean ±SD) were prescribed per patient, with all of them receiving at least one injection and 78.67 % of the cases being given an antibiotic. Percentage of drugs prescribed by generic was a modest 68.51 % while only 54.89 % of all drugs were from WHO list for essential medicines. In this study we observed that the prescribing practices for antibiotic and injection deviates from the standard recommended by WHO. Widespread polypharmacy, lack of generic prescribing and very low incidence of prescribing medicines from essential drug list are other concerns that need to be addressed in order to conform to rational drug therapy.

Keywords: Drug utilization, Prescription audit, WHO/INRUD drug use indicators, Surgery, Prescribing patterns.