Background: Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder that requires therapy over prolonged period of time to keep patient seizure free. Although patients respond with monotherapy, refractory epileptic patients require polytherapy. Drug utilization studies provide insight to rational drug prescribing.
Aim and Objective: This study was designed to analyze and to study prescription pattern of antiepileptic drugs in patients with epilepsy in tertiary care hospital.
Materials and Methods: The present study was conducted by collecting data from medical record department. Detailed data of patients diagnosed with epilepsy including demographic details, comorbidities, and allergies admitted from January 2015 to December 2017 in study pro forma were collected.
Results: A total of 386 patientÂ’s data were analyzed and it was found that male patients were most affected with epilepsy compared to females. Generalized tonic-clonic seizure (GTCS) was the most commonly diagnosed in majority of the patients. Levetiracetam (42.48%) was the most commonly prescribed drug as monotherapy, followed by phenytoin (11.91%), sodium valproate (8.54%), and carbamazepine (5.18%). The most common combination of drugs in polytherapy were levetiracetam and carbamazepine (12.43%), phenytoin with carbamazepine (8.03%), phenytoin with sodium valproate (7.21%), and phenytoin with lamotrigine (3.86%).
Conclusion: The higher incidence of epilepsy is noted in males of all ages. GTCS was the most common type of epilepsy diagnosed and majority of the patients were prescribed with monotherapy. As it is a retrospective study, there were several limitations in the study such as quality of life of patients, compliance to the drugs, adverse reactions to the drugs were not assessed. Hence, further prospective studies with more sample size should be conducted to assess various factors on drug utilization in epilepsy.
Key words: Epilepsy; Antiepileptic Drugs; Prescription Pattern; Seizures
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