Abstract
It is important to prepare for continuing medical care and test countermeasures in times of a disaster for patients with epilepsy, mental illness, and heart failure, whose symptoms are expected to be rapidly exacerbated by the interruption of treatment with drugs that require therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). Here, we show the comparison verification of VITROS XT7600 (hereinafter referred to as VITROS) and Dimension EXL200 (hereinafter referred to as Dimension), which can be used for analysis without water in TDM. The six target items are the following: antiepileptic drugs (phenobarbital, phenytoin, carbamazepine, and sodium valproate), a psychotropic drug (lithium), and a cardiotonic drug (digoxin). We also evaluated the correlation between the instruments and the stability of values after freezing and/or thawing. Among the six items examined in this study, the correlation between VITROS and Dimension instruments was good. However, phenytoin, digoxin, and carbamazepine tended to show lower values in VITROS. There was no significant difference between the measured values before and after freezing and/or thawing. On the other hand, VITROS is superior in terms of processing capability, and TDM measurement using VITROS seems to be useful in times of a disaster for patients with epilepsy, mental illness, and heart failure.
