ABSTRACT

Background: Peripheral Neuropathy (PN) is an ailment of nervous system and its incidence is increasing day by day in Indian subcontinent, mainly due to increase in lifestyle disorders like diabetes mellitus, liver disorders, hypothyroidism, kidney disorders, cancer, autoimmune conditions etc. Object: A prospective study on prescribing pattern of drugs and its effect on quality of life in patients of peripheral neuropathy in a teaching hospital. Methods: It was a prospective observational study which was carried out for a period of six months conducted in multispecialty tertiary care teaching hospital. All demographic profile of the patient (age and gender), etiology of peripheral neuropathy, drug prescriptions pattern (name of the drugs with individual drugs, mono or polytherapy) and clinical data of patients were collected and documented in a suitably designed case report form. The Quality of Life (QoL) was evaluated in patients with PN by different neuropathic pain and depression assessment scale. Results were analysed statistically. Results: Based on the study criteria, 110 patients were selected and enrolled for the study. Maximum number of patients of peripheral neuropathic pain (PNP) resides in the age group of 56–65 years (46%) & more common in females (55%) as compared with male. The most common PNP patients were encountered with diabetic neuropathy (60%). Out of 110 patients, 31 patients (28.18%) were suffering from co-morbid concurrent illness like hypertension followed by renal & hypothyroidism disease. The prescription pattern showed the majority of patients were using neuropathic pain agents (48%) (as monotherapy and combination therapy) followed by patient received prescription with neurotonic and vasoactive agents in combination. Neuropathic pain agents as monotherapy i.e. pregabalin (26%) was the highly prescribed drug followed by combination therapy, i.e. pregabalin with multivitamin (38%), and pregabalin with nortriptylline (20%) were the most popular prescribed combinations. In triple drug combination therapy, pregabalin, amitriptyline with multivitamin was the most common prescribed combination. QoL (symptomatic pain as well disability and anxiety) improvements were significantly observed by dual combination of pregabalin with nortriptylline at 6th week when compared with other combination or alone prescription pattern. Conclusion: It can be concluded that, among all the neuropathic pain agents, the pregabalin with nortriptylline was frequently and highly prescribed drug over other combinations to control the symptomatic pain in neuropathy and moreover highly efficient therapy to improve quality of life. Keywords: Peripheral neuropathy, Prescribing pattern and Utilization of drug
Publication date: 01/04/21

https://ijbpas.com/pdf/2021/April/MS_IJBPAS_2021_5448.pdf

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https://doi.org/10.31032/IJBPAS/2021/10.4.5448