Trends in prescribing antidiabetic drugs over a period of three years in South Indian tertiary care hospital

Objective: To determine the trends in prescribing antidiabetic drugs among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) over a period of three years Methods: The study was conducted as a cross sectional observational study. Prescription pattern of diabetic patients who admitted during 2008 to 2010 in medicine wards was collected from tertiary care hospital in south India. And analysed using SPSS version 20. Results: As per the study criteria, data were collected from 773, 700 and 647 type 2 diabetes mellitus patients who were admitted during the years 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively in the medicine wards. The study showed that most of the patients were males. The mean age of the study population was 57.8 years. Type 2 DM patients had a prevalence of microvascular complications from 8-18.14% and macro vascular complications from 7.6-11.8% of the diabetic population over a period of three years. On evaluation of trends in prescribing for patients with type 2 DM over a period of three years, in monotherapy, there is a decrease in rate of prescription in 2009, but again it increased in 2010(p=0.020). Monotherapy was the predominant way of management with insulin followed by sulfonylureas and metformin. Combinations of sulphanylureas and metformin commonly used as dual therapy. Insulin, Sulphanylureas and metformin combination are commonly used as triple drug therapy. There is no difference in rate of prescription in dual therapy (p=0.419) and also three drug combinations (p=0.361) over a period of three years. And few cases four and five drug combinations were used. Conclusion: We observed there is no changes in trends in prescribing antidiabetic drugs over a period of three years and also shows physicians are adhering to standard guidelines for diabetic treatment in this hospital.