Raiha Waheed, Rafia Shaheen, Fatima Amin, Saleha Sadeequa.
Drug prescribing patterns in dental teaching hospitals.
Pak Oral Dental J Jan ;36(1):49-54.

Medicines are prescribed in the dental setting for a number of reasons, like oral infections, inflammations, pain complaints, fractures, cancers etc. Medications prescribed are of various kinds mainly antibiotics, anti-inflammatory, and analgesics. The aim of this study was to observe drug prescribing trends i.e. the number of drugs and antibiotics prescribed per prescription, presence of any drug-drug interaction or adverse drug reactions if any and preference of brand or generic name prescribing, in both government and private dental teaching hospitals of Lahore. An observational and questionnaire based retrospective study was conducted for this purpose. 80 patients were selected randomly for their prescription analysis, 40 from each hospital (private and government). 20 dentists were also selected for their preferences in prescribing medicines to dental patients. Irrational prescribing was observed more in government setting than in the private hospital. Antibiotics prescribing ratio was more in government hospitals, drug-drug interactions were also observed there that were not present in private hospital. Amoxicillin was prescribed 60% in government, and 77% in private dental setting. 94% of subjects were given 2 antibiotics per prescription in government setting as compared to 4% in private setting. Generic prescribing was not observed in both government as well as in private hospitals. Conclusively, much attention must be given to government hospitals as irrational prescribing has been observed more there. The irrational use of antibiotics must be corrected. Emphasis should be given on generic prescribing to reduce and to avoid the overlapping of inventory.

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