Prescribing Patterns of Glucocorticoids In the Skin OPD of A Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital, Palakkad

DUE helps to improve the quality and cost effectiveness of drug use and there by helps to improve the patient care. It helps in identifying ADR, optimizing the drug therapy etc. Glucocorticoids are widely prescribed. In spite of these actions they produce several ADE which should be monitored. Till now, effective treatment guidelines for Glucocorticoids are not available, so our study aims to bring out a prescribing pattern for steroids. A prospective, observational study was conducted from November 2015 to April 2016.About 106 patients were included in the study. Of the 106 prescriptions analyzed, Clobetasol was most commonly prescribed topical corticosteroid (30%) and Prednisolone was most commonly used in systemic routes (25%). Diseases like contact dermatitis (26.41%) and eczema (25.47%) were most commonly seen.35 prescriptions contained fixed dose combination (25.92%). Most of the prescriptions contained monotherapy (64.15%). The generic name, strength, quantity to be used, site of application were not mentioned in most of the prescriptions. Frequent periodic prescription monitoring is essential for better healthcare outcomes for the patients.