ความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างปัจจัยเสี่ยงกับปัญหาการใช้ยาในผู้ป่วยนอก / เบญจมาศ เลปวิทย์ = Associations of risk with drug therapy problems in out-patients / Benjamas Lepawit
The objective of this study was to identify potential risk factors which might serve as indicators for drug therapy problems. Two hundreds and sixty one out-patients at Rajavithi hospital were randomly selected between October 1, 2000 and January 31, 2001. Data was collected by interviewing the patients. Their medication profiles and prescriptions were reviewed. Seven risk factors "five or more medications", "twelve or more doses per day", "regimen changed four or more times in the past year", "more than three concurrent disease states", "presence of medication with narrow therapeutic index", "presence of medication with difficult administration", and "age sixty and over" were studied as well as six drug therapy problems "wrong drug", "too little of the correct drug", "the dosage is too high", "adverse drug reactions", "drug interactions", and "not received the prescribed drug". The result from chi-square analysis showed a statistically significant association between patients who had at least one of risk factors and drug therapy problems (p = 0.000). These patients were likely to experience drug therapy problems as compared to patients who had none of the risk factors (OR = 5.257, 95% Cl = 2.928-9.439). Moreover, the presence of two, three, and four risk factors, predisposed to an occurrence of drug therapy problems to 6.355, 6.522, and 20.652 times than that found in individual with no risk factor. The result of this study confirmed that these risk factors might be used as indicators to screen out-patients for the chance of having drug therapy problems.
