Prescription pattern

Sepsis is defined as life threatening systemic or local infection due to dysregulated host response, which can lead to organ or tissue damage or death. Hence it is necessary to monitor the disease. Due to lack of data on prescription patterns, it is essential to conduct such studies. To analyze prescribing patterns of Antimicrobial agents used in treating sepsis.: It was a Prospective and Observational study which was conducted for a period of 6 months in all the departments of Apollo multi-specialty hospital. All the patients admitted with  sepsis during the study period were  screened for the use of any Antimicrobials. Those who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, were enrolled for the study. Therapeutic data such as name of drugs, doses, route of administration, duration & other laboratory data was collected and documented in a suitably designed data collection form. The Data was evaluated by using suitable statistical tools. Out of 146 patients, 95 patients (28.28%) were prescribed with Carbapenem. In this study, blood was majorly used as specimen. The commonly found causative organism was E.coli in 50 patients (32.17%) which largely effected females than males. Meropenem was found to be the major drug sensitive to E.coli. Septic shock and death were the major complications found. Health care professionals must understand the usage of antimicrobial agents for specific conditions in sepsis patients so as to minimize adverse drug reactions, complications, antimicrobial agent resistance and improve patient quality of life. The number of antimicrobial drugs prescribed to this group of patients must be minimized so as to reduce toxic effects, burden of resistance, to ensure effective treatment and improve patient safety.

Steroids are widely prescribed and used by practitioners due to powerful anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive actions1. So, care should be exercised in the rational selection of steroids2. Hence this study was carried out to asses the prescribing pattern of steroid usage. This was a prospective, observational and an intervention study.The patient data was collected in well design data collection form and subjected to descriptive statistical analysis 165 cases assessments shows, the mean age of inpatient & out patient was 56.58/55.10 years and male patients were more in both the groups. The occupational results showed Farmers and businessman’s were more followed by House wife. 52.9% IP - 54.1% OP were alcoholics, 58.7% IP - 73.8% OP were smokers. Steroids were used more in respiratory diseases like COPD [18.2% IP /85.2% OP] , Acute bronchitis  [24.0% inpatients] and Bronchial Asthma [11.5% IP/ 9.9%OP]. Among steroids, Budesonide [64.4%IP/ 85.2%OP ] was frequently used followed by Prednisolone [(5.7%IP/ 14.8%OP ], and Dexamethasone 6(5.7%) and Hydrocortisone 25 (24.2%) in IP. 50.0% Nebulization forms were  used widely, followed by Injection(29.8%), 85.2%  OP was  used Inhalers, 55.8% IP& 14.8% (OP) prescriptions had steroidal drug interactions.  81.8% inpatients were counseled correct use of steroids. The mean hospital stay of inpatients was 6.11 with SD of 4.86 days. This study showed that the prescribing of steroids was rational &. Patient counseling services were helped them to understand their therapy, disease. Even though the drug interactions observed with the steroids, benefits of therapy were noticed more.