Trends and patterns of benzodiazepines prescription from 2014 to 2016: A retrospective cross-sectional study in an outpatient setting of tertiary hospital in Malaysia.

Abstract Background Despite evidence of their association with adverse drug events and mortality, benzodiazepines are still among the main choice for treating many psychiatric disorders and neurological conditions. To date, there is a meager data on the prescribing trends and patterns of benzodiazepines in Malaysia. Objective This study aimed to investigate the trends and patterns of benzodiazepines prescribing at outpatient hospital setting. Method A retrospective, cross-sectional study was conducted at outpatient pharmacy of a tertiary hospital in Malaysia. Prescriptions for any of seven benzodiazepines (alprazolam, bromazepam, clobazam, clonazepam, diazepam, lorazepam and midazolam) issued from January 2014 until December 2016 were screened and included in this study. Trends and patterns of prescribed benzodiazepines were examined. Descriptive statistics and association between patient characteristics and prescribing patterns were performed using STATA® SE v.13.1 (Stata Corp LP, Texas, USA). Results A total of 5,728 benzodiazepines prescriptions of the seven benzodiazepines were prescribed for 1,943 patients from 2014 to 2016. BZDs were prescribed to 1,013 (52.1%) male with mean age of 46.8 ± 14.1 for the whole study population, in which 26.8% were between 45–54 years old. About 40% of benzodiazepines prescribed were classified as short-acting. About 12.6% reduction in the overall number of benzodiazepine prescriptions from 2014 (n = 1956) to 2016 (n = 1709). Alprazolam was the most frequently prescribed (43.3%) in 2014, followed by (38.9%) 2015 and (36.8%) 2016. Approximately, 69.64% (n = 6,218) of benzodiazepines were prescribed for a duration of 15 to 30 days, while 57.29% (n = 5,115) of benzodiazepines were prescribed with fixed dosing schedule. Conclusion Overall benzodiazepine prescription shows a decreasing trend from 2014 to 2016. Alprazolam, the short-acting benzodiazepine was the most frequently prescribed in hospital outpatient setting in Malaysia.