A STUDY ON DRUG UTILIZATION PATTERN OF ANTIEPILEPTICS IN EPILEPSY IN A TEACHING HOSPITAL

The objective of the study was to analyse the drug utilization pattern of antiepileptics in paediatric and medicine department. A 9 months hospital based prospective observational study was carried out in the department of paediatrics and medicine at BTGH, Kalaburgi. A total of 104 epilepsy patients were enrolled into the study and the relevant data was collected in a specially designed data collection form, the demographic data, socioeconomic data and usage of various antiepileptic drugs was analysed. The result showed that, majority were patients in the age group of 0-20 (52.88%). 66 (67.30%0) patients were male and 34 (32.70%) patients were female, 46 (44.23%) were from rural and 58 (55.76%) were from urban. The majority of the patients were students (42.30%). Most of the patients were of low economic status (37.50%). Majority of the patients prescribed oral drug 90 (58.44%).The total numbers of drugs prescribed were 154, the average number of drugs per prescription was 1.94%. The drugs prescribed with brand name were 112 (72.72%) and drugs prescribed with generic name were 42 (27.27%). The maximum number of drugs were prescribed in the form of tablet 70 (45.45%), injection 64 (41.55%) and syrup 20 (12.98%). The study concludes that the prevalence of epilepsy was more among younger generation. The most preferred antiepileptic drug is Phenytoin. Majority of the antiepileptics were prescribed with brand name. this is of concern the pharmacist can play a vital roll by motivating the prescribers to prescribe in generic name.