An empirical study on evaluation of prescribing pattern in antiepileptic therapy in pediatric patients at a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Objective:

Over 10 million children worldwide are believed to have epilepsy. Antiepileptic drug therapy is a mainstay of treatment for most pediatric patient with epilepsy. The present study was undertaken to get an overview of the current trends in prescribing patterns of anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) in the treatment of epilepsy in pediatrics department.

Methods:

A prospective observational study was conducted in 350 beds hospital over a period of 3 months. 40 pediatric patients with confirmed seizure diagnosis and on AED therapy were enrolled from outpatient and inpatient department. All the relevant data was analyzed with the help of hospital protocol, Medscape, Micromedex, Guidelines for Diagnosis and Management of Childhood Epilepsy. Results were expressed as counts and percentages.

Result:

The analysis of the results revealed that there were 16 (40%) male patients and 24 (60%)female patients, The most prescribed drug was levetiracetam  12 (30%).In this study, the majority of the populations prescribed or treated by using the single drug therapy (97.5%) as compared to that of multiple drug therapy (2.5%).

Conclusion:

For the acute management of seizures, mono therapy was found to be the most preferred choice of treatment and in this, levetiracetam was the preferred drug of physician’s choice.