Background: Congestive cardiac failure (CCF) is a complex clinical syndrome that results from structural or functional impairment of ventricular filling or ejection of blood, which in turn leads to the cardinal clinical symptoms of dyspnoea and fatigue and signs of CCF namely edema and rales. The incidence and prevalence of CCF is increasing. In India CCF affects younger age group but in western countries it's predominantly a disease of elderly. Objective: To study the prescription pattern in congestive cardiac failure in Mandya Institute of Medical Science, Mandya. Methodology: This was a cross sectional descriptive study conducted at the department of General Medicine of MIMS. Data was collected from 150 patients under the inclusion criteria. The patients case records, medication charts and other relevant documents were used as a source for data collection. A well designed patient data collection form was used for collecting the details. The information were documented and subjected to suitable statistical methods. Result: Total 150 prescriptions with CCF were collected. The mean age was found to be 65.08 ± 14.11 years and male 58% and female 42%. About 573 drugs were prescribed for treating CCF in 150 patients who are included in the study and 90 drugs were given for treating respiratory failure associated with CCF. The drugs prescribed were diuretics (88%), antiplatelet drugs (66%), statin (60%), ACE-inhibitors (50%), ?-adrenergic blockers (28%), vasodilators (24%), anticoagulants (18%), sympathomimetic (10%), angiotensin receptor blockers (6%), aldosterone antagonist (2%), cardiac glycosides (2%), PDE-5 inhibitor (2%) and anti-ischaemic metabolic agent (2%). 60% of the total prescriptions under the study contained nebulisation with salbutamol sulphate + ipratropium bromide + budesonide (58%) and salbutamol sulphate + budesonide (2%). Single formulation of two drug combination was given in 24% of the total number of prescriptions which were constituted by atorvastatin + aspirin (18%), atorvastatin + clopidogrel (2%), atorvastatin + fenofibrate (2%), spironolactone + torsemide (2%). 401 (57.8%) of the drugs were received orally, 41 (5.7%) intravenously, 119 (17.9 %) intramuscularly, 27(4.1%) subcutaneously, 6(0.9%) sublingually and 90 (13.2%) drugs by inhalational route. Conclusion: Our study concludes that CCF is mostly seen in males and the age group in which it is mostly found is ?65 years. We found that the prescription pattern in congestive cardiac failure vary with inter subject variability and our study concludes that polytherapy was beneficial over monotherapy
