An Analysis of Returned Medicines in Primary Care

Abstract

The results from this pilot study indicate that unused medicines impose a significant financial burden on the National Health Service as well as a social burden on the United Kingdom population. Further studies are examining the precise nature of returned medicines and possible solutions to these issues.

Medication Wastage and its Disposal Amongst Patients at Suri Seri Begawan Hospital in Brunei Darussalam

“…Our findings were similar to other studies conducted in this subject matter James et al 2009;Langley et al 2005); 54.2% (n = 137) of participants still kept their unused medicines because their medical conditions have improved or have totally resolved. The second and third main reason for having unused medicines were due to the side effects of medicines (n = 86, 34%) and the medicine being expired (n = 78, 30.8%).…”

Reasons why medicines are returned to Swedish pharmacies unused

“…Consequently, to have a quantitative estimate of the relative importance of the reasons for medicines being returned unused, the reason for each drug/pack must be recorded along with a note of how old the returned drug is. Previous studies often only recorded one reason per patient irrespective of how many packs/medicines were returned (3,8,11); also they failed to present details on data collection (5,6,10,12). Differences in the relative importance of reasons between studies may also depend on the age of the returned medicines.…”

“…Studies on the reasons why medicines are returned to pharmacies unused have been performed in different countries including the UK (3,5,6,7,8), Canada (9), Norway (10) and Sweden (11). However, in some studies only the main reason for each patient has been recorded (3,8,11), while other studies do not give details on the methods of data collection (5,6,10,12).…”

“…However, in some studies only the main reason for each patient has been recorded (3,8,11), while other studies do not give details on the methods of data collection (5,6,10,12). When a patient returns more than one drug, there may be a different reason for returning each drug.…”

Analysis of Community-Based Accumulation of Home Medications (CACHES) Found at Death Scenes in Davidson County, Tennessee

“…In the setting of a 30-or 90-day supply of medications, this can result in a significant number of doses remaining unused. In disposal studies, patients report adverse drug events as a common reason for unused medications (Coma, Modamio, Lastra, Bouvy, & Marino, 2008;Langley, Marriott, Mackridge, & Daniszewski, 2005;Mackridge & Marriott, 2007;Shin, Kim, & Lee, 2009). Analysis of administrative drug claims data also identify the use of multiple dispensaries as a significant risk factor for the overprescribing, misuse and/or abuse of prescription opioids (Parente et al, 2004;Sullivan et al, 2010).…”