Introduction:

According to the World Health Organization, the disposal of medicines is the elimination of all those pharmaceutical products that have expired, spilled, or contaminated and medicines that are not useful and need to be disposed of properly.

Objective:

To characterize the medicines discarded in Costa Rica during 2019, with the collection system of a company that collects disused medicines.

Materials and methods:

An observational, descriptive-analytical, and cross-sectional study was carried out. The study was carried out at the facilities of the MPD Company in Curridabat, San José, where the company's containers are stored. The data obtained was deposited in a database elaborated in Excel 2016.

Results:

Most of the expired drugs were for human use, especially for adults, the most common pharmaceutical form was enteral, from the private and national sectors. There is a significant relationship between the condition of the drugs and their origin, as well as between the origin and the pharmaceutical form. There is no significant relationship between the pharmaceutical form of the drugs and their condition, nor between nationality and condition.

Conclusions:

The condition of disuse was the most prevalent among the discarded drugs. The most discarded active principle was paracetamol and the main pharmacological group found in discarded products was analgesics.