Clinical Pharmacist Driven Impact towards Intensive Monitoring and Reporting of Adverse Drug Events in Psychiatric Patients

Abstract

Background: Drugs are used for the well-being of an individual but apart from its effectiveness many adverse effects are observed. Antipsychotics are the mainstay of treatment for psychotic disorders. Most of the first generation and to a lesser degree second generation antipsychotic agents are associated with ADEs like extra pyramidal symptoms (EPS), sedation and anti-cholinergic side effects. Method: This study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital. Informed consent was obtained from patients care takers. Patients aged ≥18 years of either gender admitted to psychiatry department were included in the study. Patients on OPD basis, emergency, ICUs and special population were excluded. The main objective of the study was to estimate the incidence of ADEs and evaluate ADEs based on various parameters like demographics, drug class implicated, individual drug implicated, organ system affected, and analysis of ADEs (causality, severity and preventability). Result: A total of 58 patients were enrolled into the study. Out of them, 32 patients experienced 90 ADEs. The incidence rate was found to be 55.17%. Male (65.51%) preponderance was observed over females (34.48%). Benzodiazepine was reported to be one of the major drug class implicated in which Lorazepam accounted for 36.51% ADEs. CNS was one of the most prominent systems affected due to ADEs. Conclusion: The fact goes undenied, psychiatric patients are prone towards adverse events, the only good that could be done to these subjects is try avoiding and minimizing the events. This could be possible only by thorough monitoring of such cases. Our results showed incidence rate of 79.31%. This incidence rate could be minimized by the presence of a clinical Pharmacist for better treatment and creating awareness of the medicines to the patients.