EVALUATION OF PRESCRIPTIONS OF ALLERGIC RHINITIS AND RELEVANCE WITH ICD-10 CODES IN A TERTIARY HEALTH CENTER
Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, KBB Anabilim Dalı, Bolu, Türkiye Objective: In this study, we aim to investigate the pattern of prescriptions in patients with the diagnosis of allergic rhinitis and to evaluate the consistency of diagnosis and the prescriptions in ICD-10 classification in a tertiary referral center.Material and Methods: The hospital database was scanned for the patients' admissions which had one of the allergic rhinitis with ICD-10 codes of J30.1, J30.2, J30.3 or J30.4 from June 2011 to June 2014. The age, gender, date of referral, complaints, other ICD-10 codes of the diagnoses, and the drugs included in the prescriptions were recorded.
Results: There was a total 81559 admissions to our outpatient clinic and of these 9833 (12%) had the diagnosis of allergic rhinitis. There were 2434 (24.8%) admissions with a single diagnosis of allergic rhinitis.7399 (75.2%) admissions had 1 or more diagnoses accompanying allergic rhinitis. 112 different diagnoses were used with allergic rhinitis. The most frequent diagnosis accompanying allergic rhinitis was acute rhinosinusitis (n=3006).The diagnosis of chronic rhinosinusitis were used in only 161 admissions. Of the 9833 admissions 7723 had prescription which consisted of 21012 items. Overall, there were 6069 topical nasal steroids and 3631 antibiotics prescribed.
Conclusion: ICD-10 may be the source of statistical data and scientific studies which could determine healthcare policies. For this reason the correct usage of these codes is important. Social security and healthcare policies may indirectly cause inconsistent usage of ICD-10 codes. While using ICD-10 code as data, it must be taken into account that the codes may not always refer to the excepted diagnosis.
Keywords : ICD-10, allergic rhinitis, rhinosinusitis, prescription