PRESCRIBING PATTERN OF ANTIBIOTICS AT THE GENERAL PRACTICE CLINIC OF A HEALTH CARE CENTRE

Abstract

To study the prescribing pattern of antibiotics used in the treatment of prevalent diseases in the general practice clinic, (GPC) of Maruthi Medical Centre Hospital (Mmch) Erode. A retrospective study of 300 case notes of patients who had an antibiotic prescription and attending the GPC for the first time between March 1 and June 30, 2012 was carried out. Demographic data, patient’s complaints, physician’s diagnosis and antibiotic prescription was loaded into Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and the descriptive statistics reported. The total number of antibiotics prescribed for the 300 patients involved in the study was 327 with an average number of 1.09 per patient. Two hundred and fifty one (83.67%) patients were prescribed a single antibiotic, 44 (14.66%) had two antibiotic prescriptions while the remaining five (0.16%) were prescribed three antibiotics. Penicillin was the most prescribed class of antibiotics 165(50.45%). Among the penicillin, amoxicillin was used most (24.65%) followed by amoxicillin plus clavulanic acid combination (23.31%). Of the 327patient antibiotics prescribed, 219 (73.00%) were prescribed using brand names. No parenteral antibiotic was prescribed, and there was no microbiological evaluation carried out before the prescription of antibiotic in any of the cases. There was a high prevalence of empiric treatment with orally administered antibiotics in this study.