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Abstract
Background: Drug use studies generally aims to describe current treatment practices, compare the performance of individual facilities or prescribers, periodically monitor and supervise specific drug use behaviors and in some cases assess the impact of an intervention. In other to describe if drugs are prescribed or used rationally or irrationally, standard measures must be employed. Applying the Anatomic Therapeutic Chemical/Defined Daily Dose methodology (ATC/DDD) provides a comprehensive overview of drug utilization patterns and trends over time, which can be used to inform public health policies and interventions. This study sought to describe the pattern of analgesic use among hospitalized patients in a tertiary health facility in south-south Nigeria, and employed the ATC/DDD method in determining their consumption trend. Methods: This was a descriptive, retrospective, cross-sectional review of prescriptions of patients admitted at a tertiary health facility in south-south Nigeria. Data was collected and descriptive and inferential statistics were determined using SPSS version 25 and GraphPad Quickcalc. Results: A total of 11,051 drugs were prescribed with an average of 5.75 drugs per prescription. A total of 19 analgesics were prescribed and acetaminophen accounted for 60.6% and 58.9% of all analgesics in the first quarter of 2018 and 2021 respectively. 83.0% and 73.8% of the prescriptions in 2018 and 2012 respectively, contained one or more analgesics and up to 82.07% were prescribed as generics. There was a slight reduction in the number of prescriptions with analgesics between 2018 and 2021 which was not statistically significant (ρ>0.05). 57.6% of the prescriptions had two or more analgesics in 2018 compared to 41.43% in 2021. There was a decrease, (from 35.1% to 24.2%), in the number of opioids prescribed between 2018 and 2021 respectively. Despite the reduction in the number of opioids prescribed, there was no significant difference in the mean DDD of opioids and non-opioids in 2018 (ρ>0.05) while in 2021, a statistically significant difference was observed when the DDD of opioids and non-opioids were compared. In conclusion, high volume of analgesics were prescribed and the consumption of non-opioids remained consistently higher than the opioids within the periods studied.
