Disease and treatment awareness, prescription patterns, and self-medication practices in patients of functional bowel disorders: A cross-sectional survey

Functional bowel disorders (FBD) are chronic, recurrent, debilitating disorders affecting the mid or lower gastrointestinal tract with no identifiable underlying pathology. There is a dearth of Indian studies focusing on treatment awareness and prescription evaluation in FBD. Due to chronic course, patients tend to self-medicate. The study was planned to evaluate disease and drug treatment awareness, self-medication practices, and prescription patterns in FBD patients. A cross-sectional, single-center, questionnaire-based study was carried out on FBD patients after getting clearance from the Institutional Ethics Committee. The patients were administered two questionnaires, i.e. disease/drug awareness and self-medication questionnaire. Prescriptions were analyzed based on World Health Organization prescribing indicators. A total of 118 FBD patients were enrolled and the common disorder was functional constipation (94/118, 79.7%). Number of males (77/118, 65%) was greater than females (41/118, 34%). In disease awareness (98/118, 83%), patients opined that FBD occurs frequently and agreed that medications can treat FBD. In treatment awareness (106/118, 90%), patients were aware about the importance of drug compliance, but only (10/118, 9%) knew the adverse effects. In prescription patterns, a total of 311 medications were prescribed. A total of 173 medications were primary drugs for FBD. Laxatives were the common class (98/138, 68.9%) prescribed with polyethylene glycol (77/138, 55.7%) as the most common drug prescribed for functional constipation. A total of 28/118 (23.7%) patients' self-medicated prior to visiting the current OPD. FBD patients were aware of the dosing schedule and consulted their treating doctor but awareness regarding drug name, and adverse effects was poor among the patients. Laxative-polyethylene glycol was the common drug prescribed. Only less than 1/4th of patients resorted to self-medication commonly with herbal remedies.