Identification of drug therapy problems in patients with chronic kidney disease

Abstract

Drug therapy problems (DTPs) are common in patients with chronic kidney disease because of the complexity of their drug regimen and can adversely affect their desired treatment outcome. Often, there are co-morbidities, this imply concomitant use of many drugs, thus making the management of these patients particularly challenging. This was a prospective, cross-sectional study undertaken in the Renal Unit of the Medical Outpatient Department of Central Hospital Warri and the Department of nephrology Delta state University Teaching Hospital Oghara over a period of one year. The prescriptions of the patients were screened for drug therapy problems using the Medscape drug information application version 5.12. The identified drug related problems were documented in the drug therapy problem documentation form. More than half, 120(65.93%) of the respondents had two or more DTPs, 87(47.80%) 1 or 2 and 62(34.07%) no DTPs. Overall, the total number of patients with DTPS were 120(65.93%). Respondents with serious drug interactions were 10(13.51%), 62(83.7%) significant, and 17(22.97%) had minor drug interactions. Of the 120(65.93% DTPs identified, 13(7.4%) was wrong drug, 120(65.90%) inappropriate adherence and 74(40.66%) drug interactions. There is a high occurrence of drug therapy problems (DTP) among the chronic kidney disease patients treated in the surveyed facilities. Keywords : Drug therapy problems; Kidney disease