TY  - JOUR
A1  - Erler, Antje
A1  - Beyer, Martin
A1  - Petersen, Juliana
A1  - Saal, Kristina
A1  - Rath, Thomas
A1  - Rochon, Justine
A1  - Haefeli, Walter E.
A1  - Gerlach, Ferdinand M.
T1  - How to improve drug dosing for patients with renal impairment in primary care - a cluster-randomized controlled trial
T2  - BMC family practice
N2  - Background: Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are at increased risk for inappropriate or potentially harmful prescribing. The aim of this study was to examine whether a multifaceted intervention including the use of a software programme for the estimation of creatinine clearance and recommendation of individual dosage requirements may improve correct dosage adjustment of relevant medications for patients with CKD in primary care.
Methods: A cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted between January and December 2007 in small primary care practices in Germany. Practices were randomly allocated to intervention or control groups. In each practice, we included patients with known CKD and elderly patients (>=70 years) suffering from hypertension. The practices in the intervention group received interactive training and were provided a software programme to assist with individual dose adjustment. The control group performed usual care. Data were collected at baseline and at 6 months. The outcome measures, analyzed across individual patients, included prescriptions exceeding recommended maximum daily doses, with the primary outcome being prescriptions exceeding recommended standard daily doses by 30% or more.
Results: Data from 44 general practitioners and 404 patients are included. The intervention was effective in reducing prescriptions exceeding the maximum daily dose per patients, with a trend in reducing prescriptions exceeding the standard daily dose by more than 30%.
Conclusions: A multifaceted intervention including the use of a software program effectively reduced inappropriately high doses of renally excreted medications in patients with CKD in the setting of small primary care practices.
Y1  - 2012
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/26414
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-264147
SN  - 1471-2296
N1  - © 2012 Erler et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 13
IS  - 91
SP  - 1
EP  - 8
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -