Carbamazepine tablets prescription for bipolar affective disorders in Primary Care

Abstract

Background: Bipolar affective disorder is a chronic, recurrent mood disorder with symptoms ranging from mania, hypomania and depression, or a combination of both. Carbamazepine according to some clinical practice guidelines is placed in third line for its treatment.

Objective: to characterize the prescription of carbamazepine 200mg tablets for bipolar affective disorder in the municipality of Santa Clara.

Methodology: An observational, retrospective, descriptive and cross-sectional research was conducted, which corresponds to a drug utilization study, of the prescription-indication type for the drug carbamazepine 200mg tablets in July 2023. The universe was made up of all current patients while the sample consisted of all patients with bipolar affective disorder. The type of sampling was stratified random. The results are presented in tables using absolute numbers and percentages.

Results: a predominance of the female sex (61.11 %), age group 51-60 years (23.61 %), by sex the highest number of female patients was observed, in the same age group 51-60 years (16.67 %) while in the male sex the highest number was in the group 11-20 years (11.11 %) and the most frequently used dose was 3 tablets daily (50.00 %).

Conclusions: Bipolar affective disorder still represents a challenge in terms of accurate, early diagnosis and appropriate management. Efforts should be redoubled in order to unify diagnostic criteria for a comprehensive approach to this pathology.