Pattern of Logical Drug Prescription Among Iranian General Dental Practitioners

Abstract

Objective: To determine the prescribing patterns of the general dental practitioners in Kerman province in Iran. Material and Methods: In this cross sectional study 1200 prescriptions, which were prescribed by general dentists in Kerman province during one-year period, were evaluated. Each prescription was assessed for the number of drugs per prescription, drug (category, name, route of administration, frequency) and duration of treatment. Descriptive statistics were used to calculate the absolute and relative frequencies, mean and standard deviation. The Chi-square test, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test were used. The statistical tests were performed at the significance level of 0.05. Results: The mean number of drugs per prescription was 2.59. Antibiotics, Analgesics, corticosteroids and antiseptics were the most common drug category prescribed drugs by general dentists. Oral route was the commonest route of drug prescription (84.1%). Amoxicillin capsule (60.5%) was the commonest drug prescribed by general practitioners followed by ibuprofen derivatives (55.4%). Spelling errors was found in 62.7% of prescriptions. The mean score of prescriptions for logical prescription pattern was 7.36 ± 1.32 out of 9. Conclusion: Dental prescribing patterns should be considered as a potential area for improvement in the treatment process and patient safety. It is suggested to emphasis more on principles of prescription at university and retraining courses for dentists.

Survey on Tunisian Dentists’ Anti-Inflammatory Drugs’ Prescription in Dental Practice

“…Our study showed that ibuprofen was the most frequently prescribed NSAIDs. This result is in accordance with previous studies [ 6 , 9 – 15 ].…”

“…The present finding indicated that dexamethasone was the second AID and first steroidal AID prescribed by dentists. This result is also in agreement with the result of Hashemipour in 2019 [ 15 ]. Furthermore, clinical trial research studies are needed to assess and compare the efficacy of different AIDs in management of dental pain.…”

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“…The average number of drugs per encounter was comparable to WHO standard value in the present study, indicating the absence of polypharmacy and risk of drug-drug interactions similarly to one Indian study but lower than the reporting from other studies 14,24,25 . Generic drug prescriptions in the present study were lower than the WHO standard value (100%), and slightly more than onethird of the branded drugs were prescribed to the patients, which is lower than the branded drug prescriptions reported by Fader and his coinvestigator from their study conducted in Nigeria 4 .…”

“…Most drugs were prescribed either in tablet or capsule dosage forms for 3 to 5 days treatment with twice to thrice daily administration 22,23 . However, a study conducted in Kosovo reported analgesics in only 33 patients (1.35%) of the total number of patients (n=2442) registered for dental care 24 .…”