Ex) Article Title, Author, Keywords
Ex) Article Title, Author, Keywords
2011; 4(1): 5-14
Published online March 30, 2011
Copyright © Korean Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and Risk Management.
Ye-Jee Kim,MSc1, Nam-Kyong Choi, PhD2, Sun-Young Jung, PhD1, Jong-Mi Seong,MSc1, Joongyub Lee,MD2, and Byung-Joo Park, MD,MPH, PhD1,2
김예지1, 최남경2, 정선영1, 성종미1, 이중엽2, 박병주1,2
This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Objective: To evaluate prescribing patterns of antidepressant (AD) for the Korean elderly depressive patients inprimary care clinics. Methods: We used health insurance claims records from the Korea Health Insurance Reviewand Assessment Service database. Inclusion criteria of this study were outpatient department visit, diagnosis of depressionwithout psychotic disorders in primary care clinics between January 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006. Thegeographic distribution of study subjects and AD prescribing patterns of regional area and doctor’s specialty wereanalyzed. Chi-square tests were used to test of independence in AD prescribing patterns by region and doctor’sspecialty. Results: Total number of claims for AD prescription was 550,106 for 82,293 elderly patients. Female(72.7%) and patients aged 65 to 69 years (39.8%) were more frequently prescribed group. Proportion of studysubjects was relatively high in Chungcheong-do (20.9‰), Jella-do and Jeju-do (20.3‰), Deajeon (19.4‰) andGwangju (18.6‰). Of all the AD prescriptions, 84.0% was monotherapy, tricyclic antidepressant (TCA) (66.4%),atypical ADs (16.0%) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) (15.4%) were frequently prescribed. Incombination therapy regimen, co-prescription of TCA and atypical AD, TCA and SSRI, TCA and TCA had occupied25.6%, 22.6%, 21.9%, respectively. The proportion of mono-drug regimen and combination regimen showedvariability by regional area and doctor’s specialty (p＜0.01). Conclusion: Overall 20.0‰ of elderly patients wereprescribed ADs and large regional difference was found in prescription patterns of AD. There was a need forstandardizing AD prescription for the Korean elderly depressive patients in primary care clinics. (JPERM 2011;4:5-14): Drug utilization review; Aged; Depression; Antidepressant
Keywords Drug utilization review, Aged, Depression, Antidepressant
