Background: Drug safety is considered as an integral and important part of drug therapy where antibiotics are utilized and reports on drug safety components-Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR), adverse events both in premarketing and post marketing phase are taken into consideration to analyze drug cost leading to prolonged hospitalization.
Material and Methods: To evaluate ADR profile of antimicrobials over a period of 24 months (October 2010 to September 2012) in a tertiary care hospital of two different regions in India with an objective to assess social costs (cost analysis) of drugs.
Results: In 950 prescriptions an average of 1.7 Antimicrobial Agents (AMAs) were prescribed per patient and duration of stay was 6.8 days. The most common AMAs prescribed were combination of beta lactams followed by aminoglycosides in North India and combination of beta lactams followed by quinolones in South India. The parenteral route was preferred over oral and other routes of administration in both the regions. The percentage of drugs prescribed by generic name was 82% with 46% in North India and 36% in South India, respectively.
Conclusion: The current study suggests that ADRs due to antimicrobials is a significant health problem leading to increase in cost of hospitalization. Antibiotic prescription pattern, generic name usage, cost effective analysis data also presented in the study.
