Revista de la OFIL
ISSN 1699-714X ISSN 1131-9429
GURDIAN-SOLORZANO, C; LEON-SALAS, A; CARTIN-RUIZ, S SANTAMARIA-ULLOA, C. Antineoplastic medication pick-up rates in a Costa Rica national hospital. []. , 30, 1, pp.47-51. 18--2021. ISSN 1699-714X. https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/s1699-714x20200001000012.
Objective:
To analyze the percentage of picked-up doses of oncologic drugs not included in the Essential Medicine List according to the medical prescribing service and the administration route of the drug in a third level hospital in Costa Rica.
Method:
Data was obtained by retrospective analysis from databases developed for the hospital's control of acquired drugs and from the dispatched drug registry.
Results:
Not all medications acquired through the special drug buying mechanism are picked-up by patients from the Oncology and Hematology Services. Overall, the pick-up rate was 90.3% for the 98 processes analyzed. Significant differences for the picking-up percentages were found for the medical prescribing service (t=-2.68; p=0.01) and the drug´s administration route (t=-2.61; p=0.01). Multivariate analysis shows that for the Medical Oncology Service, pick-up rate is significantly lower among divorced (ß=-4.7; p<0.01) and widowed (ß=-20.5; p=0.01) patients compared to married ones.
Conclusions:
Even when pick-up rates are not a way to measure therapeutic adherence, they allow to establish a primary relationship between the patient and its treatment. The underpicking of treatments found by this study shows the need to increase the research in order to understand patient´s reasons to abandon oncologic treatments that are not included in the Essential Medicine List.
: Antineoplastic; patient compliance; pick-up rates; Medical Oncology; Hematology.