Objective: To study the pattern of drug prescription among pregnant women referred to the antenatal care clinic of a tertiary care centre in India. Method: It was a retrospective analysis of pattern of drug prescription in 1000 consecutive pregnant patients referred to antenatal clinic of the hospital between January 2016 and December 2016. Results: Average number of drugs prescribed to each patient was 3.92 with a range of 1-15. In 49.9% patients drugs were prescribed empirically. Average number of empirical drugs prescribed per patient was 2.02 with a range of 0-9. In our study, 93.9 % patients received at least one FDA category A drug while 14.2 % patients received FDA category X drugs. In 142 patients receiving category X drugs, 94(66.1%) were prescribed these drugs empirically. Category X drugs was given to 57.4 % patients before 16 weeks of gestation. Iron was the most commonly prescribed drug in category A while Injection Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin was most commonly prescribed category X drug. Conclusion: Caution should be exercised while prescribing drugs to pregnant women. Unindicated prescription of drugs leads to increased financial burden on the pregnant women while also exposing mother and fetus to deleterious effects of these drugs.
