Pharmacoepidemiol Risk Manage.  2023 Mar;15(1):62-71. 10.56142/perm.22.0019.

Evaluation of Pharmacist’s Interventions in Patients Taking Oral Anticancer Drugs

• Kim CR
• Lee SY
• Geum MJ
• Ko JH
• Son ES
• Yu YM

• KMID: 2544378
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.56142/perm.22.0019

Abstract

Objective
With the increase in cancer incidence and technological development, approvals of oral anticancer drugs are increasing. A number of oral targeted anticancer drugs have been reported to have a high frequency of potential interactions. However, few studies have evaluated pharmacists’ interventions for patients taking oral anticancer drugs. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate pharmacists’ interventions using objective indicators in patients taking oral anticancer drugs.
Methods
Pharmacists’ interventions were studied among cancer patients aged ≥ 19 years who were prescribed oral anticancer drugs in inpatient and outpatient settings between July 2020 and June 2022. The interventions were analyzed using the Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe (PCNE) version 9.1 criteria and their clinical significance was evaluated using the Overhage criteria.
Results
A total of 456 interventions were performed in 341 patients. The most frequently intervened drugs were propulsives (15.0%) among the concomitant drugs and protein kinase inhibitors (13.9%) among the anticancer drugs. The most frequent type of intervention was “effect of drug treatment not optimal (46.3%)”, followed by “adverse drug event (possibly) occurring (31.6%)”. The most frequent cause of the interventions was “drug selection (53.5%)”, followed by “dose selection (31.8%)”. The acceptance rate of the intervention was 84.4% and 87.1% were clinically significant.
Conclusion
This study showed that pharmacists' interventions are useful for safe and effective drug treatment in cancer patients. Therefore, more active intervention by pharmacists are needed for cancer patients taking oral anticancer drugs. (PeRM 2023;15:62-71)

Keyword

Antineoplastic agents; Pharmacists; Pharmaceutical Care