DRUG UTILIZATION PATTERN IN AN ICU SETTING IN TERTIARY TEACHING CARE HOSPITAL

Amudavalli K. and Amudhan Arvind E.*

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The intensive care unit (ICU) is a place where plenty of drugs are administered to patients, reason behind it being most of them are critically ill and also suffering from lot of complications. There is a very minimal data about drug utilization in ICUs in our locality. Hence the aim of our present study was done to asses the drug utilization pattern in an ICU setting in tertiary teaching care hospital. Methods: This is a retrospective study done from case records of patients admitted to the ICU in our hospital during the time period from June 2017 to December 2017.We collected the complete demographic data of the patients, drug utilization pattern of the commonly used drugs in the ICU were also collected. Results: A total of 300 patients were evaluated consisting 58 % male patients. Most common aetiology for admission to the ICU were a cerebrovascular accident, chronic kidney disease, heart ailments and road traffic accident. Antimicrobial agents in 87 % patients was the commonly used dug followed by gastrointestinal drugs.Among antimicrobials Cefotaxime was the most commonly antibiotic during our study period. Conclusion: Based on above results it’s clear that due to high chance of getting an hospital acquired infection there is an increase in empirical use of antibiotics. Hence an hospital antibiotic policy should be outlined and followed to streamline the excessive use of AMAs.

Keywords: Drug utilization, Intensive care unit, Antimicrobial agents.