Introduction: The official policy of the French National Health Insurance system is to deny reimbursement for drugs prescribed for off-label indications. The objectives of this study were 1) to quantify the use of off-label prescriptions by physicians from a hospital department of dermatology in France; 2) to characterize these off-label prescriptions; 3) to assess data from the literature on the appropriateness of these off-label prescriptions.
Patients And Methods: For each patient consulting between February 1 and April 1, 2001, the symptom or the disease that was treated and the type of prescription were recorded on standard forms.