Self-Medication in Ophthalmology in Pokhara Valley, Nepal

Self-medication is the use of medicinal products by the consumers to treat self recognized disorders or symptoms. Self-medication encourages self reliance for curative, preventive, promotive and rehabilitative care but self-medication for ophthalmic disorders may result in adverse drug interactions and decrease in visual outcome ultimately leading to blindness. A prospective cross-sectional descriptive survey of ophthalmic patients was done to assess their self-medication practice. Patients were interviewed and questionnaires were filled. Patients' demographic data, patients' self-medicating habit, drugs used for medication, ocular complains of patients, source of information, source of medicine and reasons for self-medication were noted down. More than one third of the patients were reported self-medicating in our study.