Systematic review of survey/questionnaire-based drug utilization studies in Turkiye

Drug utilization studies (DUS), providing insights into various aspects of pharmacoepidemiology from prescribing to medication use, can be conducted through real-world data from health records and survey-based data. In this study, we aimed to describe survey/questionnaire-based DUS conducted in Turkiye.

We searched online databases for the most frequently used keywords in DUS from January 1993 till May 2023 and identified 180 survey-based DUS conducted in Turkiye. We described DUS by their populations, sociodemographic characteristics, timeframe, setting and provinces, data collection method, medication categories, and article-specific variables were evaluated.

We identified that 68.3% of the DUS were in English and 91.7% were indexed in Web of Science (median 1 [interquartile range: 1-2] citation). We found that 21.7% of the articles (n=39) had pharmacology affiliation. Adults are the target population in 37.8% of the studies and age and gender were not reported in 27.2% and 16.7%, respectively. The response rate was not stated in 55.0%. We determined that 48.3% of the studies were focused on a single medication/medication group. The mean time from data collection to publication was 2.5±1.9 years, and the highest number of articles (10.6%) were published in 2021.

Our systematic review shows that the majority of DUS were listed in well-known international indices, suggesting that our local studies invoke global interest and hold a valuable position in health research. Nevertheless, lack of reporting of methodological characteristics in substantial part of the studies can be considered an important room for improvement of DUS.