drug utilization pattern in a pain clinic of a tertiary care teaching hospital in eastern india

Background: Patients attend the Pain Clinic with varieties of complains of pain, like low back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, headache, facial pain, different neuralgias and other neuropathic pain states. They receive a multimodal treatment for their pain, Multimodal pain therapy is an integrated multidisciplinary treatment in small groups with a closely coordinated therapeutic approach. Drugs that are prescribed for treatment are not only NSAIDS or Opioids, but also various groups of adjuvant pain medications like anti-epileptics, antidepressants etc. Aim: To find out the drug utilization pattern in the Pain Clinic of a tertiary care medical college hospital in Eastern India. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional; unicentric study was conducted in the Pain Clinic during April 2013 to June 2013. New patients who were willing to participate in the study were enrolled as per selection criteria. A copy of prescriptions were collected from the patients. The drugs prescription patterns were analyzed. Result: 319 patients were included in this study in three months period and their prescriptions were analyzed. Female patients (222) were more in number than male (97). As single prescription and also as combination therapy, paracetamol was found to be the most frequently prescribed drug. Frequently used adjuvant pain medications were found to be pregabalin (21.63%) and amitriptyline (16.92%.). Antacid was commonly prescribed as gastroprotective agent. Among drug combinations paracetamol (325 mg) + tramadol (37.5 mg) combination was used most frequently. (55.17%). Conclusion: In this uncentric study we found that patacetamol, tramadol, pregabalin and amitriptyline are the commonly used medications in a pain clinic. We need more multi-centric and comparative Indian studies.