Main objective of the current study was to assess the inappropriate medication prescribing related to Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs) by evaluating existing prescribing patterns in tertiary care hospital in KPK. It is descriptive and observational study, in which prescriptions given to elderly patients were analyzed for potentially inappropriate medication (PIM) of PPIs. The appropriateness of prescriptions was assessed following International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision (ICD-9) codes, while Medscape and Stockley’s drug interaction checker was used to find drug interactions. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20. The study showed that 49% patient patients received PPIs for unapproved indications and the recommended guidelines were followed in 51% cases only. Moreover, Potential drug interactions were observed in 42.6% cases, the most common drug interactions were omeprazole-ciprofloxacin (i.e., 36.7 %). These findings showed that current prescribing practice of PPIs is prone to overprescription of PPIs for unapproved conditions accompanied with potential drug interactions.

Index Terms- Potential drug-drug interaction, Overprescription, Elderly patients, potentially inappropriate medication