Emerging Trends to Prescribe Multivitamins

The use of multivitamins and nutrients are increased to a great extent in past few years. Multivitamin / mineral supplements are commonly used as nutrient supplement. Most of them contain about 10 vitamins and minerals having different doses. Many individuals use these supplements as pre-emptive and to alleviate diseases as well. The trend of self-prescription of vitamins is increasing now-a-days which in turn is being converting to the irrational use of vitamins. In this effort we evaluated the prescribing trends of the multivitamins in different departments of hospital like orthopedic, gynecology. Retrospective analysis was carried out to evaluate. A questionnaire was designed to evaluate the prescribing ratio of multivitamins in human patients. Total number of patients was 70 in which 17 were male and 53 were female. Out of 70 patients, 49% prescriptions contained combination of multivitamins and nutrients containing vitamin A, D, E, B-complex, and calcium as 9%, 4%, 4%, 7% & 3% respectively. Percentage of the patients suffering from orthopedic, gynecology, gastrointestinal disturbance, hepatic insufficiency and of anemia was 27%, 20%, 16%, 12%, 2%, and 9% respectively. Study showed that the age group of 27-45 was more prone to disease and received multivitamins which was 43%. Least percentage was of age group 12-26 and that was 14%. It was seen that the deficiency of vitamins mostly due to lack of awareness and poor dietary intake. Early detection of vitamin level can lead to better prognosis.