Abstract
BACKGROUND: Patients undergoing liver transplantation require pharmacological treatment indefinitely and some patients have complications related to this treatment (diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, impaired renal function, osteoporosis). PURPOSE: To evaluate and analyse the quantitative difference in the number of drugs after liver transplantation. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A longitudinal observational study with prospective data collection and usual clinical practice of the series of cases undergoing liver transplantation over a 2 year period (2016–2017). The data collected were: sex, age, cause of transplantation, number of drugs before and after transplantation. The data have been extracted from the electronic medical record through the Selene(®)program and we used descriptive statistic using the SPSS(®) V23 program. RESULTS: During this study period, 71 patients underwent liver transplantation in our hospital, of which 67.6% were men, the mean age was 53±11 years. The main causes of liver transplantation were: 34.2% alcoholic liver cirrhosis, 22.9% hepatic cirrhosis associated with the hepatitis C virus and 10% hepatic biliary cirrhosis. The mean number of medications taken by these patients was 4.92±3, while the mean in the hospital discharge was 11.71±2. Thirty-three patients (48. 5%) had to stop all treatment prior to transplantation, one patient had already been transplanted and 50% kept only one or two drugs (omeprazole, calcium-vitamin D supplement, levothyroxine, tenofovir, acetylsalicylic acid as antiaggregant). After undergoing transplantation, 16.7% of patients had high blood pressure and 50% had diabetes mellitus that required insulin administration. All patients were discharged from the hospital with hospital diagnosis medicines with an average of 2.65±0, 54 medicines and 36.4% with hospital-use medicines. 4. 3% of the patients not got over the transplantation. CONCLUSION: The increase in the number of drugs after liver transplantation is significant, moreover the administration and dispensing conditions of some of the drugs have a greater complexity, especially immunosuppressants and insulin, so these patients should receive pharmaceutical care. REFERENCES AND/OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to my service for your unconditional support. No conflict of interest