Abstract

SILVA HERRERA, Lázaro; VERGARA FABIAN, Eduardo; YERA ALOS, Isis  and  FREIJOSO, Elsie. Utilización de benzodiazepinas en la Atención Primaria de Salud. Rev Cubana Med Gen Integr [online]. 2002, vol.18, n.3, pp.187-190. ISSN 0864-2125.

A descriptive study of prescription and use of drugs from November 1999 to January 2000 was performed. An X-probabilistic sample made up of 28 medical offices and 459 patients who fulfilled the criteria of being chronic consumers of benzodiazepines. Prescription and consumption of benzodiazepines have raised considerably in the last few years, therefore, they have become one of the drug groups that are most sold in the world, although we have not found any study that shows the prevalence of their use in Cuba. Consequently, we intend to estimate the prevalence of the chronic use of benzodiazepines among the adult patients going to health care primary services in the City of Havana. Other objectives of this paper were to determine the socio-cultural characteristics of chronic consumers, the reasons for prescription, the most used drugs and the level of self-medication. Of 804 surveyed benzodiazepine-consuming persons aged over 15 years, 57% consumed this drug regularly. 73.6% of this chronic consumer population are females aged over 60 years predominantly, housewives, low education level and married. It was proved that the most used benzodiazepine was diazepam in 65.9% of the cases. The majority of prescriptions were made for anxiety (57.7%) and insomnia (31.4%). Self-medication was found in 25.1% of chronic consumers.

Keywords : ANTI-ANXIET AGENTS, BENZODIAZEPINE [therapeutic use]; PRIMARY HEALTH CARE; DRUG USE HABITS.