Assessment of prescription pattern in asthma therapy at Shamli hospitals

This drug utilization or prescription-monitoring study was conducted to evaluate the drug-prescribing trend of anti-asthmatic drugs in various hospitals (health care centre) of Shamli, (Prabuddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, India). The study was conducted in three famous hospitals of Shamli on three hundred thirty (330) patients, using a developed prescription auditing Performa. Data was recorded from the co-operating patients, attending the outpatient department using a chance random sample method for six months by interviewing and information was filled in the performa. The collected data was studied statistically for determining the most prominently prescribed medication for the treatment. The collected information suggested that β-agonist were the most frequently prescribed anti-asthmatic drugs followed by corticosteroids, Methylxanthine, anti-histaminics and leukotriene antagonist. Also the performed prescription analysis revealed that there is significant difference in the prescriptions for multiple drug therapy (90%) as compared to single drug therapy (10%). Also even after the commercial development of pulmonary targeted systems, oral dosage form like tablets (54.93%) were preferred over inhalation (31.69%). Thus, it can be concluded that the present prescribing pattern of antiasthmatics in Shamli does not completely meet standard guidelines for the asthma treatment. Hence there is a need of awareness amongst the physicians of Shamli so that they can follow the guidelines while treating asthma. Also the patients must be encouraged to use newly developed inhalational drug delivery systems for improving the treatment.