Prescribing Pattern of Drugs in Hypertensive Patients-A Retrospective Study

Aims: The prescribing pattern of drugs used for treating hypertension changes over time in response to changes in recommended guidelines and innovations in drug formulations, among others. In addition, the classes of antihypertensive drugs used vary among the countries. The objective of this study was to analyze the Prescribing practice of antihypertensive medications in a tertiary care hospital in India.
Study Design: Retrospective analysis of prescription practice for hypertensive outpatients.
Place and Duration of the Study: Tertiary care hospital, Kanchipuram District, Tamil Nadu, India and duration of the study was one year.
Methodology: Prescription practice for 400 hypertensive outpatients were analyzed on basis of age, percentage of male and female patients, anti-hypertensive drug category, most frequently prescribed hypertensive drug and percentage of one/two drug combination.
Results: As monotherapy ACE-Inhibitors 38.25% (153) were the most commonly prescribed antihypertensives followed by calcium channel blockers 19.25% (77), Loop-Diuretics 13.25% (53), Beta-blockers 6.75% (27), Angiotensin-2 antagonists 6.75% (27) and Vasodilator 3.5% (14) ranked last in this study. Combination treatment usually consisted of two antihypertensive drugs as a Co-formulation, the most common combination was a ACE-Inhibitors+CCB 5% (20), followed by Beta-blocker+CCB 3.5% (14), ACE+ Loop-diuretics 2.75% (11) and CCB+CCB 1% (4). Patients gender, age and comorbidities significantly influenced which treatment was prescribed.
Conclusion: In this study it was keenly noted that the ACE-Inhibitors are the most commonly prescribed monotherapy antihypertensive agents 38.25% (153) and their prescribing pattern was in consistent with the guidelines. Thiazides and the combination drugs were underutilized in this study, despite robust evidence to support their use.