Study Of Polypharmacy At A Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital Bangalore

OBJECTIVES: The study was designed to study the extent of polypharmacy among the prescriptions received at Out Patient pharmacy in St.Philomena's Hospital, Bangalore, to identify the most common class of drugs prescribed in polypharmacy prescription, to identify the drug interactions among the prescribed drugs, to identify the various therapeutic classes involved in major drug interactions. METHODS: A prospective hospital based observational study was carried out in the outpatient department of St.Philomena's hospital. The research student collected all the prescriptions received at OP pharmacy. All the prescriptions were carefully analyzed for polypharmacy and the data were pooled and analyzed. RESULTS: A total number of 200 polyphonic prescriptions were found in the out-patient pharmacy of St.Philomena's Hospital. During the study period of 6 months, it was found that the majority of the prescriptions were prescribed to female 101(50.50%) and 99(49.50%) were prescribed to male .Among 200 prescriptions it was found that 134(67%) contain 5 drugs followed by 42(21%) contain 6 drugs, 15(7.50%) contain 7 drugs and 9(4.50%) contain more than drugs. The most common therapeutic class was found to be Analgesics pertaining to 122(61%) drugs followed by antibiotics, which were 65(32.50%) drugs and 55(27.50%) drugs were Vitamins. It was found that the majority of polypharmacies have been occurred in the age group of adults 113(56.50%) patients followed by neonates and infants 52(26%) patients and geriatrics 19(9.50%) patients. Among 200 prescriptions, 82 drug interactions were observed which were found to be 43(52.43%) major followed by36 (43.90%) moderate and3 (3.65%) minor. Among the Major interactions, anti-inflammatory drugs were found to be the most commonly participating therapeutic class of drug in interactions. CONCLUSIONS: only 10% of prescriptions were found to have polypharmacy which was commonly observed in female patients. Among polypharmacy prescriptions less than 50% had drug interactions, majority of which were major drug interactions.