Benzodiazepines: utilization and patterns of use in a university hospital.

Information on the number of benzodiazepine prescriptions in all the departments of the Innsbruck University Clinics in 1985 was obtained from the hospital pharmacy. Expenditure on benzodiazepines amounted to 0.5% of total medication costs. In a second step, the authors questioned 264 patients from the five largest departments about benzodiazepine use. On the day of the interview, 24.1% of all investigated male patients and 20.5% of the female patients were taking benzodiazepines. Of the patients found to take benzodiazepines, 34.5% had already been using these before hospital admission. One-fifth of these patients reported problems when trying to stop medication.