www.ijbcp.com International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology | September-October 2013 | Vol 2 | Issue 5 Page 567 IJBCP International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology Print ISSN: 2319-2003 | Online ISSN: 2279-0780 Research Article Prescription pattern of antimicrobial agents in a teaching hospital of South India Ajay M. Khade 1 *, M Shakeel M Bashir 1 , Savya George 2 , Sheethal Annaldesh 2 , Kishor A. Bansod 3 INTRODUCTION Indiscriminate use of drugs like analgesics, antimicrobials and vitamins are common throughout the world. 1 Inappropriate use of drugs like polypharmacy, non compliance by the patients, use of drugs which are unnecessary, expensive, unrelated to diagnosis and misuse or overuse of antimicrobial are commonly observed problems in the world which are more severe in developing countries. 2 Drugs are prescribed irrationally; it not only increases the cost of disease management but also increases morbidity and mortality and responsible for increase incidence of adverse drug reactions and drug resistance. 3 One of the major problems of irrational medication is antimicrobial resistance. It is the major preventable concern which we are facing in this century. Use of irrational and unnecessary antimicrobials still remains common problem not only in developing countries but also in developed countries like USA and Britain although many initiatives are taken. 4 In developing nations burden of infectious disease is high and the cost of drugs is a major limiting factor for replacement of older resistant antimicrobials with newer drugs since newer antimicrobials are more costly. 5 This is a major issue in developing country like India in which use of antimicrobials increased about 40% in between 2005 and 2009 with 60% increase in sales of cephalosporins. 6 ABSTRACT Background: Use of irrational and unnecessary antimicrobials remains common in the developing countries. The present study was conducted to evaluate the use of antimicrobial agents in the tribal district hospital of Andhra Pradesh India. Methods: In this retrospective study, 200 hospitalized cases from medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology and paediatrics departments were randomly selected. Results: Most common diagnosis was febrile illness (15%) followed by gastroenteritis (10%) and malaria (8%). Antimicrobials were used in 57% cases. All the cases were managed by empirical treatment. Cefixime (40%) was the most common antimicrobial followed by ampicillin (32.50%), metronidazole (30%) and ciprofloxacin (26.50%). Use of antimicrobial monotherapy (41.67%) and 2 drug therapy (36.46%) was common. Conclusion: Empirical use of higher antimicrobial agents is routine and cheap antimicrobials like ampicillin are still most useful drugs in the region. There is a need of specific essential drug list for the region. Keywords: Antimicrobials, Drug resistance, Irrational medication doi: 10.5455/2319-2003.ijbcp20131011 1 Department of Pharmacology, RIMS, Adilabad, Andhra Pradesh, India 2 MBBS Student, RIMS, Adilabad, Andhra Pradesh, India 3 Department of Pharmacology, PDMMC, Amravati, Maharashtra, India Received: 28 June 2013 Accepted: 21 July 2013 *Correspondence to: Dr. Ajay M. Khade, Email: ajay_khade2000@yahoo.com © 2013 Khade AM et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.