Case Reports
Evaluation of the impact of hospital pharmacists on advice and intervention in antithrombotic drug use
2019 Volume 20 Issue 3 Pages 133-138
Details
2019 Volume 20 Issue 3 Pages 133-138
In patients scheduled for surgery and taking antithrombotics, incidents such as surgery postponement due to misdirected medication occurred. In this study, with consents from patients on antithrombotic medication who underwent surgery, we evaluated the incident occurrence rate related to interruption and resumption of antithrombotic medication by investigating the influence or effects of the advises and interventions provided by the hospital pharmacists to the patients' family physicians or family pharmacy.
When surgery was scheduled, the hospital pharmacist confirmed the medicines to be taken, and other related matters on the scheduled surgery day, and the hospital pharmacist intervened in order to appropriately perform surgery, adjusting the drug withdrawal measures and coordinating with the doctor and family pharmacy. The intervention group consisted of 85 patients out of 1466 surgical patients during the period from December 24, 2014 to April 30, 2017, for whom the doctor explained the discontinuation of antithrombotic drugs, and advice and intervention were given by the hospital pharmacist. The control group was 195 patients out of 1844 surgical patients from January 1st, 2012 to December 23rd, 2014, who received only explanations about discontinuation of antithrombotic drugs by doctors. The incidents were “operation postponement due to wrong medication”, “misdirection among medical personnel” and “bleeding/blood clot”. The intervention group and the control group were adjusted by tendency score matching. Based on 11 variables, it matched 1 to 1, and matched 81 pairs. Incidents were noted in 1 case in the intervention group and in 12 cases in the control group (P=0.139). In the analysis by tendency score matching, a significant difference was found in one intervention group (1%) compared to eight control groups (10%) (P=0.040). This revealed that hospital pharmacists' interventions could contribute in preventing interruption and resumption incidents for patients scheduled for surgery and taking antithrombotic drugs.
