A CROSS-SECTIONAL RESEARCH STUDY ON OVER THE COUNTER (OTC) SELF-MEDICATION USAGE IN THE CASE OF PREGNANCY BEFORE, DURING OR AFTER WITH POSSIBLE ADVERSATIVE RESULTS

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the reasons of choice for the self-medication trend, medicines type, information source and over-the-counter medication usage by pregnant women. Study Design: Cross-Sectional Study (CSS). Place and Duration of Study: Completed the current descriptive study in 06 months period starting from October, 2017 and ending in March, 2018 in Jinnah Hospital, Lahore. Material and Methods: Selected total number of 351 women for the present study who were going to be or undergoing pregnancy. Carried out one on one interviews of all the participants of study and collected all the required data on a formulated form specially designed for the current research. Collected data was consisting of practicing reason, recommendation source, medicine awareness, medicine usage type, illness, over the counter medications and demographic information. Used the SPSS software version 20 to carry out data analysis. Results: The age limit of all patients was from 18 years to 45 years with the mean age as 26.28 ± 10.42 years. As per observations of this study there were 37.9% (133) patients used OTC medications during the pregnancy, 63.5% (223) patients adopted OTC medication before their pregnancy and 36.5% (128) patients carried out OTC medication in their previous pregnancy. According to the findings of present study observed no awareness about the medicine in 77.4% (103) cases, Paracetamol was most commonly used medicine observed in 43.6% (58) patients and Headache was the common most sickness noticed in 60.2% (80) patients. Conclusion: The results of the study very clearly show that the tendency of over the counter medicine use without any prescription and lake of awareness is too much common in especially women of Pakistan. Keywords: Over the counter (OTC), Pregnancy, Awareness, Medication, Headache