A recent clinical trial demonstrated that pharmacist-led interventions significantly decreased drug-related problems in vascular surgery patients during their hospital stay, contributing to enhanced patient safety and clinical outcomes.
Vascular surgery patients often require complex medication regimens due to the management of multiple comorbidities, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and hypertension. Polypharmacy can further complicate treatment for these patients.
This, in turn, increases the risk of drug-related problems, leading to possible prolonged hospital stays and increased healthcare costs. Hospital pharmacists, as medication experts, are ideally placed to address these issues through medication reconciliation, therapy reviews and patient education.
This pilot, single-centre prospective, uncontrolled clinical trial, assessed the impact of pharmacist-led interventions on reducing drug-related problems in vascular surgery patients at a Slovakian hospital. Over one year, pharmacists performed medication reconciliation and reviews at admission and discharge for patients with carotid or lower extremity artery disease, identifying and resolving drug-related problems.
Results showed a significant reduction in drug-related problems from an average of 2.3 at admission to 1.6 at discharge. Pharmacist interventions were accepted by physicians in over 50% of cases, and 75% of patients demonstrated good-to-average understanding of their medication at discharge. The study also demonstrated the importance of pharmacist integration into multidisciplinary teams to achieve these outcomes.
Study authors noted a dearth of evidence in the literature examining pharmacist-led interventions for hospitalised vascular surgery patients; this study broadens the evidence on that topic.
Although establishing medication histories is a routine clinical pharmacy activity in many countries, it was a novel activity in this trial. The authors reinforced ‘the importance of the medicines reconciliation and review performed by the hospital pharmacists.’
A further innovative element of this study was educating patients about their prescribed medications, which acknowledges the established effectiveness of patient education in enhancing medication understanding.
While extensive evidence describes the positive impact of hospital clinical pharmacy services on patient outcomes, additional research is needed to strengthen this understanding in the context of clinical trials, the authors said.
As this was a pilot study, the authors suggested that ‘future research should confirm the positive impact of pharmaceutical care using a prospective, randomised controlled trial design’ to further validate the benefits of pharmacist-led interventions.
Reference
Porubcova, S et al. Pharmacist-led interventions for vascular surgery patients: a prospective study on reducing drug-related problems. BMC Health Serv Res 24, 1564 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-12015-7.
