The pharmacists’ potential to provide targets for interventions to optimize pharmacotherapy in patients with asthma.

Int J Clin Pharm. 2013 Jul 26;
van Boven JF, Hiddink EG, Stuurman-Bieze AG, Schuiling-Veninga CC, Postma MJ, Vegter S

Background Despite of pharmacists’ specialized knowledge of medication and his/her regular contact with patients, the expertise of the pharmacist may not be used enough yet. Furthermore, the potential of pharmacy dispensing data is underestimated. Objective To provide targets for tailored interventions in asthma patients and to illustrate the potential value of pharmacists in the identification of these targets using individual pharmacy dispensing data. Setting We performed a cross sectional retrospective analysis assessing the quality of asthma patients’ pharmacotherapeutic treatment. Method Drug dispensing data from 2008 to 2009 were retrieved from a Dutch pharmacy database. All asthma patients were screened for potential suboptimal pharmacotherapy in 2009. Results were projected to a single community pharmacy to provide an estimate of the number of patients eligible for potential interventions. Main outcome measures (1) frequent use of short-acting ?-agonists without preventive medication, (2) concomitant use of ?-blockers, (3) multiple short courses of oral corticosteroids without using inhaled corticosteroids and 4) use of long-acting ?-agonist without inhaled corticosteroids. Results A total of 8,504 patients were eligible for analysis of the quality of their asthma treatment. 20.9 % of all asthma patients used >100 DDD short-acting ?-agonists… Continue reading →