Unnecessary GI medication utilisation
The proportion of study subjects who were prescribed unnecessary GI medications was 43.80% (Fig. 1). Regional variations were observed, with GI drugs less likely to be prescribed in metropolitan areas (39.77%) than they were in urban (53.86%) or rural (44.55%) areas. Variations in age group and NSAIDs use were also observed. In the 50-64-year-old age group and NSAID users were prescribed unnecessary GI medications the most (48.00% and 49.26%, respectively). In terms of the physicians’ specialties, the highest proportion of GI drug prescriptions was observed in surgery (54.49%). We found that the total number of drugs prescribed for cold symptoms was inversely proportional to unnecessary GI medication use (Table 1).