| Antibiotics are the pillars of modern medical care and play a significant role in the treatment of infectious diseases
where it reduced both morbidity and mortality from infections. Inappropriate use of antibiotics may fail to achieve the
desired therapeutic outcome, which may result in the development of adverse effects and the emergence of resistance.
OBJECTIVES: Assessing the prescribing patterns of antibiotics in infectious diseases and drug use evaluation using WHO
prescribing indicators. METHODOLOGY: A prospective observational study carried out in departments of General
Medicine, General Surgery and Paediatrics in Sri Venkateshwara Ramnarain Ruia Government General Hospital, a tertiary
care hospital in Tirupati, for six months with a sample size of 240. RESULTS: The majority of the patients prone to
infectious diseases (27%) were in the age group of 1-10 years, males were more prone (62.5%). Most commonly affected
system was gastrointestinal and respiratory system (23.3%). Among 398 antibiotic drugs, Cephalosporins (38.4%) are the
most prescribed category of the drug. Among 240 prescriptions, 65 prescriptions have drug interactions, and five patients
reported adverse drug reactions. An average of 5.86 drugs prescribed per patient encounter, the percentage of meetings with
antibiotics was 57.8%, generic names prescribed were 28.26% and 99.2% antibiotics were prescribed from EDL which
shows deviations from standard WHO indicators. CONCLUSION: Prescription patterns and usage of antibiotics in this
study was inappropriate in the comparison of results with WHO prescribing indicators. Effective interventions are required
to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions.ddd |
