Evaluation of the clinical effect of pharmacist intervention

Abstract

Introduction:Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers among Egyptian women. Health-related quality of life (QOL) and reduction of side-effects play an important role for the treatment of cancer patients. The purpose of this prospective study was to determine if pharmacist’s intervention could improve clinical outcomes of patient with breast cancer. Patients and methods: This study was a single-center interventional prospective study carried out on a group of 60 breast cancer patients at Clinical Oncology Department, Ain Shams University Hospitals from June 2017 to May 2018 patients were subjected to a thorough history taking, assessment of treatment-related adverse events before each cycle and at the end of the treatment. In addition, assessment of QOL was done at the baseline and at the end of treatment to evaluate the effect of the pharmacist’s interventions. Results:The present study has shown that the clinical pharmacist interventions were associatedwith significant decrease of toxicity grades of patients, for example, anemia where the percentage of patients of grade 2 decreased from 17% to 1.7%; moreover, 5% of patients had grade 4 nausea/vomiting, while after pharmacist intervention, it became 0%. Regarding patients’ QOL, results of the present study showed improvement of mean±standard deviation of most of the QOL scales such as systematic therapy side-effects decreased from 80.8±19.53 to 42.8±16.8, all with P<0.001. Conclusions:Most treatments for breast cancer despite beneficial result in toxicities, primarily anemia, neutropenia, nausea, and pain. These side-effects adversely impact patient QOL and can lead to treatment discontinuation. Clinical pharmacist intervention resulted in beneficial clinical outcomes in patients with breast cancer such as the reduction of treatment-related side-effects and the improvement of patients’ QOL. Abbreviations: QOL = quality of life; SD = standard deviation; SPSS = Statistical Package for Social Sciences.