Improving medication safety in patients on antithrombotic therapy
Improving medication safety in patients on antithrombotic therapy
Every hour, 11 people in the Netherlands develop thrombosis, a blood clot in a blood vessel. Blood thinners are used to prevent and treat thrombosis, but they can also cause bleeding. Their use requires a careful balance between the risk of bleeding and the risk of thrombosis.
After thrombosis, some patients use two blood thinners at the same time. After a few weeks or months, one of these blood thinners should be stopped. In daily practice, this does not always happen. The aim of this thesis of Renate van Uden is to explore how blood thinners can be used more safely.
In a study in three hospitals, we found that 41.2% of patients using two blood thinners should have stopped one blood thinner earlier. Because they did not stop the blood thinner in time, they unnecessarily had a higher risk of bleeding. After advice from a pharmacist, this percentage dropped to 2.2%.
Community pharmacists need the right information to prevent patients from using two blood thinners for too long, but this information is often missing. Therefore, we developed a questionnaire that helps pharmacists ask the right questions to patients to decide if using two blood thinners is really needed.
We also sent pharmaceutical discharge letters to community pharmacies. These letters explained why patients must use blood thinners and for how long. As a result, patients stopped the blood thinner that needed to be stopped more often on time. The percentage of patients using two blood thinners for too long decreased from 22.1% to 9.3%.