A critical view on the current use of daptomycin in Spain: The daptomise study.

BACKGROUND: The Study on the Clinical Use of DAPTOMycin in Spain (DAPTOMISE Study) is a national surveillance program of daptomycin use. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the current variability in daptomycin consumption across the different hospitals and the adequacy of therapy, specially focused on underdosing. METHODS: All adult and pediatric patients who received, at least, one dose of daptomycin in a single week in 98 institutions in Spain were included. The adequacy of daptomycin use was evaluated with respect to the indication, dosage, adjustments after microbiology results, switching to an oral agent and length of treatment. RESULTS: A total of 615 patients received daptomycin during the study week. The prevalence use was 2.3 patients / 100,000 inhabitants per week, 12.4 patients / 1000 admissions and 9.2 Days of Therapy (DOT) / 1000 hospital stays. These rates varied between hospitals: from 0 to 13.9 patients / 100,000 inhabitants, from 0 to 76.1 patients / 1000 admissions and from 0 to 49.4 DOT / 1000 hospital stays. The most frequent infections were bacteremia (31.6 %) and skin and soft tissue infections (17.9 %). Microbiological results were available in only 65.4 % of infections. The most frequent microorganisms were Staphylococcus aureus (192 isolates, of which 87 were resistant to methicillin) and coagulase-negative staphylococci (124 isolates). A total of 136 prescriptions (22.1 %) were underdosed. Dosages < 8 mg/kg were used for 35.6 % of endovascular infections and for 26.2 % of osteoarticular infections. Overall, 57.2 % of prescriptions were not optimal in, at least, one item. Clinical cure rate was 76.1% and mortality attributable to the infection 8.1%. CONCLUSION: This is the first registry that identifies the prevalence of use of daptomycin in Spain and shows a high variability in the consumption between the different hospitals. Daptomycin underdosing was present in more than 20 % of cases.

Severe toxicity to capecitabine due to a new variant at a donor splicing site in the dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DPYD) gene.

Severe, life-threatening adverse reactions to capecitabine sometimes occur in the treatment of solid tumors. Screening for dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DPYD) deficiency is encouraged before start of treatment, but the genetic variants that are commonly analyzed often fail to explain toxicities seen in clinical practice. Here we describe the case of a 79-year-old Caucasian female with breast cancer who presented with life-threatening, rapidly increasing toxicity after 1 week of treatment with capecitabine and for whom routine genetic DPYD test resulted negative. DPYD exon sequencing found variant c.2242+1G>T at the donor splicing site of exon 19. This variant is responsible for skipping of exon 19 and subsequent generation of a non-functional DPYD enzyme. This variant has not been described previously but was found in three other members of the patient's family. With this case, we show that exon sequencing of DPYD in patients who experience marked toxicity to fluoropyrimidines and test negative for commonly evaluated variants can prove extremely useful for identifying new genetic variants and better explain adverse reactions causality.

Risks in the implementation and use of smart pumps in a pediatric intensive care unit: application of the failure mode and effects analysis.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to identify risk points in the different stages of the smart infusion pump implementation process to prioritize improvement measures. METHODS: Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of a General and Teaching Hospital. A multidisciplinary team was comprised of two intensive care pediatricians, two clinical pharmacists and the PICU nurse manager. FMEA was carried out before implementing CareFusion infusion smart pumps and eighteen months after to identify risk points during three different stages of the implementation process: creating a drug library; using the technology during clinical practice and analyzing the data stored using Guardrails® CQI v4.1 Event Reporter software. RESULTS: Several actions for improvement were taken. These included carrying out periodical reviews of the drug library, developing support documents, and including a training profile in the system so that alarms set off by real programming errors could be distinguished from those caused by incorrect use of the system. Eighteen months after the implementation, these measures had helped to reduce the likelihood of each risk point occurring and increase the likelihood of their detection. CONCLUSIONS: Carrying out an FMEA made it possible to detect risk points in the use of smart pumps, take action to improve the tool, and adapt it to the PICU. Providing user training and support tools and continuously monitoring results helped to improve the usefulness of the drug library, increased users' compliance with the drug library, and decreased the number of unnecessary alarms.