engleski

Seasonal variation of benzodiazepine utilization among the Croatian population

Background: Benzodiazepines are medications widely used to treat anxiety and insomnia, and in managing alcohol withdrawal. These drugs should be only used in a short period of time, because within weeks of chronic use, dependence and withdrawal symptoms may develop. Additionally, abrupt interruption of the therapy occurs as a rebound phenomenon in the form of anxiety or insomnia. Methods: The data for this study was extracted from Croatian Health Insurance Fund database and included the information about frequency of benzodiazepines prescription via outpatient utilization, retrospectively for the years 2015 and 2016. Only patients who utilized minimum of seven prescriptions in one year were included in further analysis, and for the purposes of our analyses, we assumed that the patients took the number of pills as prescribed. The rationality of benzodiazepines utilization as the seasonality pattern is shown in this paper. Results: The results have shown an increasing trend of benzodiazepine utilization in a two consecutive years (2015 and 2016), with an average number of prescriptions of 259 535 in 2015, and 270 774 in year of 2016. The highest benzodiazepine utilization was noted during summer months. The overall increase was found with the exception of slight decline in July 2016 in a comparison to July 2015. Conclusions: Previous studies have shown that patients tend use benzodiazepines over longer time periods than recommended by current guidelines. Whether prescribing benzodiazepines might raise a patient’s risk of suicide is frequently being questioned in the past years, and recent studies reported a positive correlation between prescribed benzodiazepine and attempted or completed suicide. Additionally, the high-lethality suicide attempts group peaked in the months with a higher sunlight exposure. This analysis shows that the use of benzodiazepines in Croatia is particularly high in the summer months, which may contribute to the risk of suicide. Further analysis should be focused on general practitioner’s drug prescribing patterns due to possible clinical and financial consequences, especially related to suicide risk.

Benzodiazepine, Croatia, Drug utilization, Inappropriate medication,

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