Evaluation of Intravenous Admixtures in Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Intravenous medication continues to expand and there is an increase in number of mediations administered to the each patient. There are no specific studies to identify the incompatibilities the commonly occur in hospitalized patients while administering these intravenous admixtures. The main objective of the study was to assess the potential incompatibilities associated with Intravenous admixtures in tertiary care teaching hospital. The data for the present study was collected by Patient interview and Chart Review Method for a period of 6 months. This study included all the hospitalized patients form General Medicine Departments. The Collected data was analyzed for incompatibilities using standard drug reference books. This prospective study found out 104 combinations (both Drug-Solute and Drug-Drug combinations) among them 20 (19.23%) were compatible, 24 (23.07%) incompatible, 5 (4.80%) were variable and 55 (52.88%) were undocumented combinations. This study concluded that such type of research work would certainly increase the safety in the use of intravenous admixtures. It is important to make health care professionals aware of compatibility problems, daily prescription review by clinical pharmacist and providing unbiased information from reliable references could possibly prevent compatibility errors found on the wards.