CURRENT TREND IN PRESCRIBING PATTERN OF ANTIHYPERTENSIVE DRUGS IN A TERITIORY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL: A PROSPECTIVE OBSERVATIONAL STUDY

Background: Hypertension is one of the major chronic diseases resulting in high mortality and morbidity worldwide. A total of 972 million people were affecting worldwide. Prevalence of Hypertension in India is reported to vary from 4-15% in urban and 2-8% in rural population. It is estimated that the worldwide prevalence of hypertension would increase from 26.4% in 2000 to 29.2% in 2025. Main aim of our study is to identify the irrational prescribing habits to drive a remedial message to the prescribers. Therefore, drug utilization studies, which evaluate and analyze the medical, social and economic outcomes of the drug therapy, are more meaningful and observe the prescribing attitude of physicians with the aim to provide drugs rationally. Method: This prospective study was conducted for a period of three months from September 2017 to November 2017 in vishwabharathi superspecality hospital, Kurnool, AP. The cases which had found in Medicine department, details of cases including patient name, age, sex, and other relevant information was collected. The collected prescriptions were entered into Microsoft Office Excel sheet according to their age, gender, therapeutic category and prescription. Results: Among the study population (100 patients) most of them are males (69%) and large number of patients were above 60years. By measuring both systolic and diastolic blood pressure most of the patients we observed that large number of patients were in stage 1 hypertension. We included the patients with co-morbid conditions; diabetes is the most common co-morbidity in our population. In a total study population, most of the patients i.e. 51 patients were on dual drug therapy, Among them most of the patients were prescribed with a combination of calcium channel blockers + beta blockers followed by ARB's+ diuretics. Only 42 patients were prescribed with monotherapy i.e. single antihypertensive drug. In monotherapy Angiotensin receptor blockers were majorly prescribed followed by beta blockers and calcium channel blockers. Conclusion: Our Present study represents the current prescribing trend for antihypertensive agents. It implies that calcium channel blockers are the leading group of antihypertensive agents followed by diuretics. Key words: Hypertension, drug utilization,comorbidities, hypertensive drugs, teritiory care hospital.