K.Saravanan

ABSTRACTPneumonia is a lower respiratory tract infection that specially affects the lungs and is caused by micro-organisms. Pneumonia kills more children than any other illness, more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. It occurs in people of all ages, although the clinical manifestations are most severe in the very young, the elderly, and the chronically ill. The aim of study was to assess the prescribing pattern of drugs used in treatment of pneumonia in children and to provide parent counselling regarding post discharge drug administration in a tertiary care teaching hospital. A Prospective Observational Study which was carried out in the Department of Paediatrics of Rajah Muthiah Medical College Hospital in Chidambaram, Cuddalore District, Tamil nadu in the period of June 2016 to October 2016 (5 months). The patient demographics, antibiotics prescribed, discharge advices were collected in a specially designed data collection form. A total of 30 patients were enrolled post obtaining consent from parents into the study. 19 patients (63.33%) were male and 11 patients (36.66%) were female. The age distribution of the study showed majority of patients with pneumonia aged between 2months and 1 year, for 53.33% of the total whereas the patients at 4-12 year occupied the least. Drug use pattern showed all the 30 patients were prescribed with various nebulizing agents. In which 25 patients were mostly prescribed with 3% NACL + O2. Among 30 patients, 7 patients underwent mono therapy, 16 patients underwent dual therapy, 3 patients underwent triple therapy & 4 patients were not treated with antibiotics. Counselling for patient caretakers upon discharge were based upon certain parameters which included dose, dosing interval, side effects. Study outcomes concluded that male patients and patients with age group > 2 months and <1year were affected mostly with pneumonia. The study suggests that occurrence and recovery of young patients from pneumonia can be greatly improved