DI-059 Pharmacotherapeutic monitoring in growth-hormone treatment adherence

Abstract

BackgroundTreatment adherence is an essential requirement for achieving the main therapeutic goals. Adherence is particularly important in self-administered drugs, such as recombinant human growth hormone (r-hGH).Easypo auto-injector is a medical device pre-programmed to deliver r-hGH, indicated for replacement of endogenous growth hormone due to growth disorders.Easypod Connect software provides healthcare professionals with reports and data from the patient’s injection history, and analyses patient treatment adherence.PurposeTo analyse treatment adherence of patients treated with Easypo-r-hGH and to assess the impact of pharmacist recommendations on patient adherence.Material and methodsObservational and retrospective study. It recruited patients to whom medicines were dispensed from the hospital pharmacy service in September 2014. We excluded patients treated for under 6 months. It analysed the overall adherence scores obtained from Easypod every 6 months, and the adherence reports were entered in the Electronic Medical Record. In patients with suboptimal adherence (<80%), corrective measures were implemented and data transfer was performed more frequently to check the impact of pharmacist intervention on adherence.Results17 patients were included, 52.9% male. Average age: 6.1 years (1–13). Overall adherence over 80% in 88.2% of patients, range 96.2–100%. Suboptimal adherence was only detected in 2 patients (77% and 52.2%). In both cases the treatment was not administrated by an adult. Pharmacists supplied appropriate advice. The data transfer device was set to report more frequently, finding in both cases an improvement in adherence after the intervention (increased by 5% and 7.6% in 5 and 3 months respectively).ConclusionMonitoring r-hGH adherence can prevent noncompliance failures. Easypod is a direct and reliable method of measuring adherence. Pharmaceutical care for patients treated with r-hGH should include strategies to promote adherence, especially in cases where treatment is not administered by an adult. Monitoring adherence allows an appropriate pharmacist intervention when it is necessary.References and/or acknowledgementsNo conflict of interest.