Study on drug utilization pattern in cardiology outpatient department at tertiary care hospitals in South India: A prospective multicenter cross-sectional observational study

Background: Study of prescription patterns is an important to determine rationality of drug therapy and to maximize the utilization of resources. Objective: This prospective, multicenter, cross-sectional observational study was conducted at three selected tertiary care hospitals in South India to assess the drug utilization pattern (DUP) of cardiovascular drugs in outpatient department (OPD). Materials and Methods: A total of 1026 prescriptions of the patients attending cardiology OPD over a period of 1 year were randomly identified then critically analyzed for World Health Organization (WHO) core prescribing indicators. Results: The average number of drugs prescribed was five and medicines prescribed by its generic name were 2.33%, encounters with an injection prescribed (14.52%), medicines prescribed from National List of Essential Medicine (NLEM) were 89.27%, apart from above some other class of drugs also prescribed for patients with different comorbidities. Majority of drugs were prescribed as single drugs (86.78%) whereas 13.21% as fixed-dose combinations (FDCs). The most commonly prescribed single drug was aspirin (59.93%) and FDC were Aspirin + Clopidogrel (40.24%). Most of drugs were prescribed from the recent NLEM of India which indicates the implementation and adoption of national drug policy by the hospitals and cardiologists. Conclusion: Antiplatelets dominated the prescribing pattern in the cardiology OPD and expected to overtake anti-cholesterol agents as the sales leader. Updated knowledge about the banned drugs, irrational FDCs, deleted drugs, and recent NLEM are very important to both practitioners and pharmacists, also pharmacists have to encourage the prescribers to prescribe the cardiovascular drugs by its generic name.