A study of drug utilisation pattern in patients of chronic kidney disease at a tertiary care hospital

Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major public health issue and widely prevalent non-communicable disease in India. CKD has a complex pharmacotherapy and it inevitably requires poly-pharmacy. CKD patients require to take medications for a lifelong period, which makes it very important to study the prescribing trends on a regular basis. The main objective of the study was to analyse current prescribing trends in the management of CKD patients and to know whether the prescribing rationality was maintained.Methods: After Institutional Ethics Committee approval, a prospective Cross-sectional study was carried out at Nephrology department of a tertiary care hospital for a period of six months from 1st June 2017 to 30th November 2017. Patients diagnosed with CKD by treating Nephrologist were included and their prescriptions were analysed to study the prescribing patterns.Results: A total of 120 cases were analysed during the study, of which 81.7% were males and 18.3% were females. Analysis of WHO core drug prescribing indicators showed that the average number of drugs prescribed per patient was 5.13, percentage of drugs prescribed by generic name was 30.03%, percentage of patients with an injection prescribed was 16.6%, percentage of drugs prescribed from essential medicine list was 65.8% and percentage of patients prescribed with an antibiotic was 10.8%. Antihypertensive drugs (39.9%) were the most commonly used drugs, followed by, calcium salts (12.01%), multi-vitamins (7.6%), oral iron supplements (6.8%), erythropoietin (6.3%) and ulcer protectives (6.1%).Conclusions: Maximum number of drugs were prescribed from cardiovascular class of drugs. Calcium channel blockers and diuretics were the commonest group of antihypertensives prescribed. The principle of rational prescribing was followed