Introduction: When prescribing, dispensing and using drugs, various risk factors occur, which can lead to drug-related problems (DRP) and consequently present serious health problems and complications to patients. The Medicines Use Review service (MUR) is a tool to identify and resolve DRP.
Aim: The aim of the master's thesis was to evaluate the DRP in the implementation of the MUR in Slovenia.
Methods: The data were obtained as part of a randomized controlled clinical trial Evaluation of the benefits of the Medicines Use Review service, in which patients in the test group were performed MUR in accordance with the implementation of the service in practice. Data were obtained from completed worksheets of MUR providers and interviews with patients. We performed a descriptive analysis of DRP at the patient level and at the level of individual DRP according to the “before-after” concept. In the IBM SPSS program, we also evaluated the impact of MUR on DRP resolution using the binomial test.
Results: The test group included 77 patients with a mean age of 68,7 years, 7,2 drugs for regular use, and 2,2 drugs as needed. The reason for MUR was polypharmacotherapy in 56% of them. Fifty patients had at least 1 manifested DRP, and 27 patients had only potential problems. Among the 221 identified DRP, 90 were manifested, namely 60% of adverse events (in 39 patients), 18.9% of treatment-related problems (in 16 patients), 12.2% of treatment-related problems (in 9 patients), and 8.9% of other problems (in 7 patients). In manifested DRP, the risk factors were classified as most other causes (in 33 patients), stand-alone interventions (in 39 patients) and fully resolved problems (in 21 patients). Cardiovascular drugs most commonly caused manifested DRP (in 26 patients). MUR significantly reduced the proportion of patients with at least 1 manifested DRP (p <0.001), the proportion of all manifested DRP (p = 0.001) and the level of risk with manifested DRP (p <0.001).
Conclusion: MUR enables good identification of manifested DRP and shows great potential for their resolution
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