Analysis of individually prepared medicines prescription in community pharmacy

Our study deals with the analysis of prescription of individually prepared medicines (IPMs) in selected community pharmacies in Slovakia and Greece during the year 2011. Throughout the given period, the total sum of processed medical prescriptions in selected Slovak pharmacies was 50,992, while in Greece it was 45,862 prescriptions. Out of the total sum of prescriptions, we selected those with prescribed IPMs. In our study, we further analysed the representation of individual age groups and both genders in prescriptions of the IPMs. Next, we examined the frequency of IPM prescriptions based on specialisation of the prescribing physicians and the most frequent diagnoses for which the IPMs were prescribed. Further, we classified the prescribed IPMs into specific groups according to their drug forms. In our study, we also described the representation of individual drug forms (oral, cutaneous and for specific use) and representation of prepared or adjusted IPMs. The relevance of this topic is supported by marked decrease of rate of preparing of IPMs in the last decades as well as by necessity to preserve it for reasons such as certain diagnoses, technological and economic aspects and differences among age groups require distinctive specification of the prepared medicines.