[Effectiveness of interventions for improving drug prescribing in Primary Health Care]

To determine the effectiveness of interventions for improving drug prescribing in Primary Health Care units.

Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Searches were made in MedLine^©, ScienceDirect^©, Springer^©, SciELO^©, Dialnet^©, RedALyC^© and Imbiomed^©, in Spanish, English and Portuguese, using keywords "drug prescribing", "intervention studies" and "primary health care", indexed in each data base up to August 2014.

Experimental and quasi-experimental studies were included that had a CASP-score>5 and that evaluated effect of any type intervention on the quality of drug prescription in Primary Health Care.

A total of 522 articles were found, and an analysis was performed on 12 that reported 17 interventions: 64.7% educational, 23.5% incorporating pharmacists into the health team, and 11.8% on the use of computer applications. The strong "intervention/improvement" associations were educational interventions OR=2.47 (95% CI; 2.28 - 2.69), incorporation of pharmacists OR=3.28 (95% CI; 2.58 4.18), and use of computer applications OR=10.16 (95% CI; 8.81 -11.71).

The use of interventions with computer applications showed to be more effective than educational interventions and incorporation pharmacists into the health team. Future studies are required that include economic variables such as, implementation costs, drug costs and other expenses associated with health care and treatment of diseases.