| RESEARCH PAPER |
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| Year : 1997 | Volume
: 29
| Issue : 6 | Page : 411-415 |
Auditing of prescriptions to study utilization of antimicrobials in a tertiary hospital
N Gupta, D Sharma, SK Garg, VK Bhargava
Correspondence Address:
N Gupta
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
Objective: A pharmacy based prescription audit was undertaken in an Indian referral hospital to evaluate the feasibility of data acquisition methods and to determine the frequency of prescribing of antimicrobial drugs. An attempt was also made to relate prescription data to age and sex of patients.
Methods: During the period of study 289 prescriptions of the patients admitted in the department of Internal Medicine were used for drug utilisation studies of antimicrobials. The analysis was done for the number of antimicrobials in each prescription, prescribed frequency of individual drug, number and dose unit prescribed (DDD), age and sex frequency. Attempt was made to correlate the usage of antimicrobials with culture and sensitivity test.
Results: The frequency of prescribing penicillins and cephalosporins was 67.82%, tetracycline and chloramphenicol 4.84%, aminoglycosides 31.83%, vancomycin 1.03%, quinolones 34.25% and metro-nidazole 25.25%. The prescribing frequency of penicillins and cephalosporins was significant (P<0.01) in males while compared with females. Expensive antimicrobials like cephalosporins, quinolones and vancomycin were frequently prescribed without culture and sensitivity studies.
Conclusion: There exists both need and feasibility to perform prescription audit analysis using the accepted methods of monitoring the utilization of drugs in an Indian hospital set up.
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