Resumen de Photosensitive drugs: The great unknown
Sara Donaire Martínez, María Luque Jiménez, Bárbara Anguita Montenegro, María Teresa Franco Sereno, Raúl Pérez Serrano, Marta Rodríguez Martínez
Purpose: To detect which intravenous (iv) drugs available in the hospital pharmacotherapy guide were photosensitive, to select those that should be protected during administration and to prepare information material for dissemination in the hospitalization units. In addition, to know the degree of compliance that professionals had before and after transmitting these recommendations.
Method: Descriptive and cross-sectional study between April 2018 and October 2019 divided into three phases. In the first, all drugs administered iv were reviewed with the support of the technical file, information requested from the manufacturing laboratory, secondary and tertiary sources of information. In addition, a working group was set up to discuss the most relevant aspects and a list was drawn up of those drugs to be protected in the course of administration. By consensus, it was agreed to recommend the preservation of drugs with photoprotective bags during administration if the infusion time was greater than one hour and, furthermore, to use photoprotective administration systems if the perfusion rate was less than 15 milliliters/hour. In the second stage, patients with a prescription for one of the chosen photosensitive drugs were selected and their protection was analyzed before the dissemination of the information material. In the third and final step, patients with these photosensitives were detected again and their preservation was examined following the recommendations given. The comparison between the second and third phase is carried out through the statistical program SPSS version 23.0.
Results: 168 active substances were analyzed and 23 were identified as photosensitive medicines requiring protection during administration. An analysis of the situation was carried out before distributing the information material. The departments with the highest number of photosensitive medicines prescribed were the critical patient units with 47.8%, the medical units with 35.4% and the surgical units with 16.8%. In addition, 74.3% of the drugs did not follow the recommendations for photoprotection, of which 47.6% were not photoprotected and 52.4% had inadequate photoprotection. Following the distribution of information, in critical patient units the percentage of correctly protected photosensitive medicines increased from 53.7% in the pre-distribution period to 56.4% in the post-distribution period, in medical departments from 0% to 50% and in surgical departments from 0% to 36.1%.
Conclusion: A significant percentage of the medicines administered iv in our hospital must be protected from light either in conservation, reconstitution and/or administration to guarantee their effectiveness and safety. It is observed that photosensitive drugs are concentrated in critical patient units, where compliance is better but deficient. After the dissemination of the informative material, it is found that adequately protected drugs are increasing, which means an improvement in the safety of the use of drugs, although there is still a wide margin for enhancement
