Clinical InvestigationNegative Clinical Outcomes Associated With Drug-Related Problems in Heart Failure (HF) Outpatients: Impact of a Pharmacist in a Multidisciplinary HF Clinic
Section snippets
Study Population and Design
Consecutive patients were enrolled at the HF ambulatory clinic of a university hospital in Barcelona (Spain) between October 2008 and April 2009. All patients also visited their primary care physician regularly. The exclusion criterion was previous visit with the pharmacist at the HF clinic. Patient clinical status as well as biochemical and echocardiographic data were obtained upon patient enrollment. Patients were clinically followed for 6 months. A pharmacist, with a postgraduate master’s
Results
Ninety-seven HF patients were enrolled in the present study, with a mean number of medicines used of 10.2 ± 3.2. The majority of patients were in New York Heart Association functional classes II (46%) and III (52%) at inclusion. Forty-five percent of patients had preserved systolic function versus 54.6% with systolic dysfunction. However, the 2 groups were similar with a mean number of medicines taken of 10 (10.1 for preserved vs 10.6 for depressed; P = NS), and similar treatment. Table 2
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate DNOs and pharmacist interventions in HF patients. Our observations have several important clinical implications. First, HF outpatients suffer a high number of preventable drug-related morbidity events that may be solved or prevented by a pharmacist included in a multidisciplinary team. Second, those events are more related to comorbidities than to the specific HF syndrome, and they are more frequent in patients who take a higher number of
Disclosures
None.
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