Drug utilization study of gynecology OPD: In a tertiary care hospital.

Background: The treatment of diseases by use of essential medicines, prescribed by generic names, has been emphasized by WHO and National Health Policy of India. Drugs used in gynaecology are one of the top selling drugs in India; however they are least studied with respect to drug utilization. Thus present study was undertaken to analyze drug utilization pattern of gynecology OPD in a tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: A retrospective, cross sectional, observational study of prescriptions in Gynecology OPD. Data was obtained from an electronic medical record database of patients that attended Gynecology OPD during the study period. Prescription records of patients were screened as per inclusion and exclusion criteria and 300 prescriptions were randomly selected by Openepi software. Patient related and drug related information was collected on a customized data collection sheet. Results: The mean age of patients was 30.19+9.83 years and common age of presentation was >18-30 years. In infective cases, vaginal discharge (10.33%) was common, and in non-infective cases, menstrual disorders (24%) were common. The average number of drugs per prescription was 3.47+1.53. In drug category, minerals (30.94%) were most commonly prescribed, followed by antimicrobials (24.98%), and NSAIDs (13.37%). Polypharmacy was observed in 96.33% of the prescriptions. Conclusion: It is only by drug utilization studies that burden of diseases and corresponding utilization of drugs in gynecology can be measured. In our study majority of the drugs prescribed were generic which were from the essential medical list NLEM and WHO.