EVALUATION OF DRUG PRESCRIBING PATTERN IN PATIENTS WITH BRONCHIAL ASTHMA

Mathew George, Lincy Joseph and Neethu Mohan*

ABSTRACT

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by bronchial hyper responsiveness and airflow limitation. The present study was done to evaluate the drug prescribing pattern in bronchial asthmatic patients. From the data analysis of 55 patients, 56.3% of patients were found to be male. Among all the patients involved in the study 40% were smokers and 20% were alcoholic. This concludes that higher prevalence of asthma was associated with active smoking. Our study showed that the major precipitating factors for asthma were allergies (75%), followed by infections (18%) and unknown causes (7%). In our study, among the symptoms of bronchial asthma, shortness of breath (89.09%) was found to be highest than other symptoms. In our study majority of patient suffered from mild intermittent asthma (60%) and very few with severe persistent asthma (9.09%). Since asthma patients often require more than one drug for control of asthma symptoms hence combination are required to treat asthma. In this study majority of the patients received multiple drug therapy. In multiple drug therapy, two-drug combinations were as more widely prescribed than combinations of three/four drugs. Majority of the patients received combination therapy of beta 2 agonist and glucocorticoids via inhalational routes.

Keywords: beta 2 agonist and glucocorticoids.