Publication:

Drug utilization study of antibiotics in infectious diseases in a tertiary care hospital

Background Infectious diseases represent a major cause of mortality and morbidity in India. Irrational use of antibiotics can cause increase adverse drug reaction, leading to antibiotic resistance and increase in the treatment cost. Hence pattern of use of antibiotics need to be studied, therefore the aim of our study is to observe the antibiotics prescription pattern and drug utilization in department of medicine indoor patients at our tertiary care hospital.

Methods This was a prospective observational study carried out among indoor patients admitted in medicine ward and was conducted between January 2018 to March 2018 in Basaveshwara Teaching and General Hospital attached to M.R. Medical College, Kalaburagi. The data that was obtained was analysed and presented as percentages using descriptive statistics.

Results 100 patients were enrolled. The main reasons for admission were for diagnosis of respiratory tract infection (36%), GIT disorders (24%), Zoonotic disease (10%), Urinary tract infection (19%) and viral fever (11%). Most common antibiotic prescribed was ceftriaxone (40%), followed by piperacillin (26%). Average number of antibiotics per prescription was 1.7.

Conclusions For a wide spectrum of clinical diagnoses variety of drugs were utilized from various drug classes. Results showed that Cephalosporin was extensively used. As antibiotics are most commonly prescribed drugs and report of misuse is not uncommon so proper strategy like educational intervention and antibiotic policy are necessary to control this.