Acknowledgement:

COSTING OF DRUGS FOR TREATING REACTIVE AIRWAYS DISEASE (RAD) AT A PRIVATE

PEDIATRIC OUTPATIENT SETTING IN NORTHERN INDIA

Rajiv Ahlawat1, Pramil Tiwari1, Gaurav Gupta2

1Department of Pharmacy Practice, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER),

S.A.S. Nagar, Punjab, 2Charak Care Clinics, S.A.S. Nagar, Punjab, INDIA

This study was funded by National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Sector 67, SAS

Nagar, Punjab-160067, India.

Rajiv Ahlawat ( PhD. Scholar, NIPER) acknowledges “Victorian State Government (Australia) and the Mel-

bourne Convention and Visitors Bureau” for providing me travel scholarship to attend the conference.

Introduction:

Estimation of expenditure for reactive airways disease (RAD)

treatment in children can provide useful information to guide

clinicians and policymakers in improving the management of

RAD through better treatment.

To our knowledge, medical literature is lacking in studies that

estimate the costs of reactive treatment in Indian children.

The results of this study form „real-time‟ evidence on the cost

of treatment of infections in children.

Methods

Total number of patient attended OPD– 2902

Patients diagnosed with reactive airways disease 332

Study site: Pediatric out-patient setting

Study design: Retrospective study

Study Population: Children upto 18 year of age diagnosed

with reactive airways disease.

Study duration: One year

Age groups: new born (1day-1Y), toddler (1Y-3Y), pre-

schooler (3Y-6Y), schooler (6Y-12Y) and adolescents (12Y-

18Y) on the bases of age.

Only the direct acquisition cost of drugs in terms of Maximum

Retail Price (MRP) was considered.

The prices as mentioned on the website of Current Index of

Medical Specialities (http://www.mims.com/India) was used

for computation of cost.

For international comparison, 1 USD was considered equiva-

lent to INR61.

Results

A total of 332 patients were diagnosed to have RAD.

Objective

To estimate the cost of prescription for treatment of RAD & to

understand the contribution of drug classes used.

Conclusion:

Bronchodilators and steroids were found to be maximally pre-

scribed class of drugs.

Half of the total cost was spent on the use of steroidal class

drugs. These results need consolidation and it is recommended

to increase the sample size of the study in future.

Table 1: Profile of cost spent on use of different class

Table 2: Pattern of average cost of treatment

Figure 3: Pattern of cost spending on most commonly prescribed drugs

Figure 2: Cost spending pattern for different FDC

Figure 1: Pattern of cost spent on use of different dosage form

LT– leukotrienes

MDI– multi dose inhaler

Cet– cetirizine, Amb– ambroxol, Mont– montelukasat, Fluti– fluticasone, Salme– salmeterol, Formo– formoterol, Budes– budesonide

COT– cost of treatment