Study of drug use in outdoor pediatric patients of upper respiratory tract infections in a tertiary care hospital.
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Date
2015-09
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Abstract
Background: Upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) are the most common and
frequent occurring infections in the pediatric population. URTI is mostly viral in origin
and requires mostly symptomatic treatment. The present study was undertaken to
analyze the pattern of drug use in the management of URTI in the pediatric age group.
Methods: It is a retrospective study to assess the pattern of drug use in URTI in
pediatric outpatient department during the 5 months period from January 2015 to
May 2015.
Results: A total of 2256 prescriptions were analyzed. Most of the pediatric patients
belonged to 1-5 years age group and 58.33% were males, and 41.66% were females.
A total of 6332 drugs were prescribed out of which the antibiotics used was 1341.
The average number of drugs per prescription used was 2.81. The percentage of
prescriptions containing antibiotics was found to be 59.44%. Amoxicillin (70.91%)
was the most frequent prescribed antibiotic followed by cotrimoxazole (10.21%).
Antihistaminic and expectorant combinations were found to be the most common
prescribed class of drugs (29.34%) followed by analgesic and antipyretics (26.45%)
and antibiotics (21.17%).
Conclusions: The study revealed that the majority of children were below 5 years of
age. The most common class of drugs prescribed was antihistaminics and expectorant
combinations followed by analgesics and antipyretics. Although the majority of the
patients received antibiotics, 40.55% of patients received symptomatic treatment.
This is a welcome step as inappropriate use of the antibiotics can potentiate to the
increasing trend of antimicrobial resistance.
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Keywords
Upper respiratory tract infections, Pediatric, Prescription, Antibiotics
Citation
Joshi Usha, Hishikar Rajesh, Agrawal Suraj, Halwai Ajay, Kirtania Lopamudra, Kurrey Kavita. Study of drug use in outdoor pediatric patients of upper respiratory tract infections in a tertiary care hospital. International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology. 2015 Sep-Oct; 4(5): 1004-1008.