A Study on Drug use Pattern among Paediatric In-Patients at a Tertiary Care Hospital at Gulbarga

Background: Drug use in pediatric patients is a unique dilemma in the management and monitoring of disease, as safe and effective therapeutic regimen is challenging. So drug use pattern is essential to facilitate rationale use of drugs. Objectives: To assess the drug use pattern among paediatric in-patients at a tertiary care hospital, Gulbarga using WHO prescribing indicators. Methodology: A prospective-observational study in paediatric In-patient department. Results: A total of 134 paediatric in-patients were enrolled into the study. The prescriptions included in the study were 322 for a total of 1214 encounters. The results shows, among 134 patients, number of children (90.29%) were more than infants (9.71%).Majority of the patients were males (55.2%) than females (44.77%). There were 26 patients whose weight was not mentioned. The duration of hospital stay showed that the maximum length of stay was 11 days with a minimum of 1 day stay. Among 134 patients majority of the patients were diagnosed with (RTI) respiratory tract infections (39.5%). A total of 711 drugs were prescribed, majority of drugs were prescribed by their brand names (69.3%) when compared to generic drugs (30.64%). Analysis of WHO core drug prescribing trends shows that the average number of drugs per prescription was 4.9. and percentage of antibiotics per prescription being 19.5%, percentage of injections per prescription 34.43% and percentage of drugs prescribed from (NELM) National essential list of medicines being 42%.The most common route of drug administration was parentral (57.18%) followed by oral route (42.81%). Conclusion: From this study feedback information can be provided to the prescriber and authorities of the institute to improve the prescription pattern.