PRESCRIBING PATTERN OF ANTIHYPERTENSIVE DRUGS BASED ON COMPELLING INDICATIONS WITH HYPERTENSION

Objective: The aim of the study is to assess the various prescribing patterns in hypertension with different compelling indications.Methods: It is a prospective observational study and carried out for a period of 1 y from Feb-2014 to Feb-2015. All the required data was collected from patients through personal interview and prescriptions. The data collected from the participants was entered into Microsoft excel spreadsheet and descriptive statistics were used. The mean and standard deviation (SD) were calculated.Results: A total of 394 hypertensive patients with different comorbidities were included in which 251(63.70%) males and 143(36.29%) females were present with a mean (SD) age of 59.21±1.54. The most commonly reported first three co-morbidities along with hypertension were diabetes mellitus 191 (48.47%), stroke accounts for 57 (14.46%) and coronary artery disease in 32 (8.12%). Monotherapy was given in almost 200 (50.76%) patients and dual drug therapy was indicated in 166 (42.13%) patients, triple therapy was used only in 24 (6.09%) patients in the total sample size. Quadruple therapy is the least preferred combination therapy accounts only in 4 (1.01%) patients.Conclusion: We conclude that calcium channel blockers and angiotensin II receptor blockers were the most commonly prescribed class of drugs either alone or in combination with other class of drugs for effective control of blood pressure patients with different compelling indications. Monotherapy was preferred than combination therapy.Â