Prescripciones de medicamentos no retiradas por pacientes ambulatorios de una farmacia de Hospital de la CCSS, 1998-2002

patients have different reasons for unclaimed prescriptions. a descriptive and retrospective study was made of unclaimed prescriptions from a hospital ？s pharmacy of ccss (security ？s social system), from 1998 to 2002. an instrument to collect information was designed. it included the number of unclaimed prescriptions according to therapeutic class, service at which the patient received the prescription. the data correspond to a period of five years and with them the financial cost that represented the non-retirement of the prescriptions was considered. in total, 6.043 prescriptions were unclaimed during study？s time. the therapeutic groups of the medicines that most frequently do not retire are: non-narcotic analgesis (15%), non steroids antiinflammatory (13%), antianemic (7%), antihistamine (4%) and vitamins (2%). the medicine prescriptions that did not retired in their majority were from emergencies room (29%) and general services (51%). the total cost of unclaimed prescriptions was of 3.021.500 colons $6.321 us). the medicines non retired can compromise the patient？s health care, increase health care costs, and they could be the manifestation of the indiscriminate and irrational use of such by the users.