Drug utilization study in diabetic patients attending medicine outpatient department of a tertiary care hospital

A cross-sectional observational study of 6 months duration was done in a tertiary care hospital to determine the drug utilization pattern among diabetic outpatients. We analyzed the collected data by using descriptive statistics and determined drug use indicators, defined daily dose (DDD)/1000 inhabitants/day and utilization pattern of antidiabetic drug. Antidiabetic drugs were classified according to Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classification and their consumption was measured in terms of DDD/1000 inhabitants/day. 625 prescriptions were collected during this study. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) constituted the most predominant (95.36 %) group of patients; hence oral antidiabeticdrugs were prescribed to a major extent. The average number of drugs per encounter was 4.18 and the average drug cost per encounter was 269.04 Indian National Rupees (INR). Majority of the patients (77.44 %) were receiving three or more drugs. Monotherapy was observed in 29.6 % of patients with insulin as the most predominant concurrently prescribed drug (13.28 %). Dual therapy was prescribed to 45.44 % patients with metformin and glibenclamide (25.44 %) being the predominant combination. Among the various insulin regimens, typical split-mixed regimen (77.18 %) was the most frequently prescribed regime. Our results suggest that there still remains a scope for improving the prescribing pattern of antidiabetic drugs. The favoured use of metformin is acceptable, but the preference of glibenclamide over other sulfonylureas is unsound.