Fathi M. Sherif
Assessment of drug prescribing pattern and prescription errors in elderly patients
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The rate of aging is rapidly increasing and the term of geriatric refers to offer a medical care to elderly people. Drug consumption study on geriatric population is a vital issue since this group is totally neglected in Libya. The aim of this study was to assess drug utilization pattern among elderly patients in terms of world health organization core prescribing indicators and to evaluate the treatment cost. A total of 106 prescriptions were randomly collected from different community pharmacies located in Tripoli during the summer 2019, and were evaluated (total number of prescribed drugs is 359) for their clinical efficacy and safety. The findings revealed that 60 drugs acting on GIT (16.7%), 50 antimicrobial drugs (13.9%), 31 antihypertensive drugs (8.6%) and 30 drugs for respiratory diseases (8.4%) were prescribed to patients who are 65 years old or more. With regard to disease pattern in the elderly Libyan patients, 27 drugs were prescribed for diabetes mellitus (7.5%), 24 drugs for cardiovascular drugs (6.7%) and 14 drugs for anti-hyperlipidemia (3.9%). According to the WHO core drug use indicator pattern, the average number of drugs prescribed per encounter was 3.3. Prescription by generic name was low (41.5%). Antibiotics were 36.8% while injections were 26.6%. Thus, this study suggest that geriatric medicine and rational drug use should strongly be implanted in medical schools and teaching hospitals. Besides, a drug pattern use of the Libyan community is urgently required to avoid drug prescribing errors.
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DOI : https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5171325
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