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I have an emergency department hospital admission data-set for deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Oral contraceptive use is a risk factor for DVT. I would like to correlate oral contraceptive sales with hospital admissions for DVT.

Therefore I am looking for data on contraceptive (particularly oral) sales in the USA. If specific data on sales in Washington DC and Maryland is available this would be ideal.

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  • Market research companies must have the sales data. But if you want it fast and free, use Google Trends on respective queries. Mar 20, 2017 at 19:13

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I would be extremely leery of relying upon Google Trends as a reliable indicator of sales of pharmaceuticals. Trends measures simply search interest, not product adoption.

Instead, a good indicator for what you're looking for may be found in data from Medicaid.gov, which details highly-localized prescription data of all residents enrolled in Medicaid. While this isn't a perfect solution –– it only accounts for medicaid recipients –– it should give you a more precise idea, especially if you can find a way to control for Medicaid prescription rates vs. general RX rates.

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