Revista de Bioanálise e Biomedicina

Drug Use Evaluation of Ceftriaxone in Medical Ward of Mizan Aman General Hospital, Bench Maji Zone, South Western Ethiopia

Abstract

Gudeta Duga Geresu, Tadele Mekuriya Yadesa and Berhanu Deresa

Background: Third generation cephalosporin are most commonly used cephalosporin, ceftriaxone being the most commonly prescribed. It is used to treat different types of bacterial infections. To assure efficacy and safety of drugs, they have to be prescribed and dispensed rationally. Drug use evaluation is a performance improvement of drug use processes to achieve optimal patient outcomes. The study aimed to evaluate the utilization of ceftriaxone in medical ward of Mizan Aman general hospital.
Materials and Methods: A retrospective cross sectional study was conducted from March 15^th, 2012 to March 15^th, 2015. Medication records of 403 patients who were admitted and prescribed ceftriaxone during the previous three years to the study period were evaluated against the Ethiopian Standard Treatment Guidelines (2014) as a reference. Patient cards were selected using systematic random sampling technique. Data was collected by using structured data abstraction format.
Results: The majority of patients were female 218 (54.1%). The most frequent age group was adults in the range 25-34 y (35.8%). COPD, PUD and Bronchial Asthma were the most common co-morbid diseases which accounts for 9.2%, 6.9% and 5.7% respectively. Ceftriaxone was mainly used for the treatment of pneumonia (46.2%). Chest X-ray was the most commonly used evidence for the diagnosis. The use of ceftriaxone was appropriate only in 158 cases (39.2%). Most of inappropriate uses were seen in terms of duration of therapy (81.9%) followed by inappropriate dose (12.3%) and frequency (5.8%).
Conclusion: From this study it was observed that the most common indication of ceftriaxone was Pneumonia, followed by Meningitis. Most of the patients were improved and discharged from the hospital. Four to seven days were the most frequent hospital stay. The study also showed that there is high inappropriate use of ceftriaxone. The majority of inappropriateness was seen with duration of therapy.