A study of prescribing pattern of antihypertensive drugs among general practitioners in a tertiary care hospital in Sokoto state, Nigeria

Abstract

The study of prescription pattern of drugs seeks to describe the extent and profile of drug use, trends, quality of use and compliance with standard treatment guidelines. This study was aimed to assess the prescription pattern of anti-hypertensive drugs for out- patients at a Tertiary hospital in Sokoto state, Nigeria. This study was a retrospective survey of hypertensive out-patients' folders between January and December 2015. Data were collected using a preformed data collection form adopted from World Health Organization (WHO) prescribing indicators. Descriptive statistics including frequencies and percentages as well as mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the categorical and interval variables respectively. Analysis of 603 encounters showed that the mean age for hypertensive patients is 52.0 ± 12.3 years with the female gender being 66.3%. Diabetes mellitus (33.7%) and Heart failure (4.0%) were the most common co-morbidities found. The average number of antihypertensives prescribed per encounter was 2.0 ± 0.7. Generic prescription and prescription from Essential drug list were 54.4% and 93.3% respectively. The most prescribed antihypertensives were: Single-agents (34.7%), two drug combinations (50.6%) and three drug combinations (14.8%). Some appreciable level of compliance to treatment guidelines has been observed. However, more training and constant monitoring is necessary to ensure total adherence to both local and international standards.

Keywords: Prescription, Drug combination, Anti-hypertensive drugs, Hypertension