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Ana Lozano-Blázquez,1 Cecilia Calvo-Pita,2 Mónica Carbajales-Álvarez,1 Patricio Suárez-Gil,3 Fernando Martínez-Martínez,4 Miguel Ángel Calleja-Hernández51Pharmacy Department, Hospital de Cabueñes, Gijón, Spain; 2Pharmacy Department, Primary Health Care, Servicio Madrileño de Salud, Dirección Asistencial Oeste, Madrid, Spain; 3Research Unit Área V, Hospital de Cabueñes, Gijón, Spain; 4Responsable del Grupo de Investigación en Atención Farmacéutica, Universidad de Granada, 5UGC Provincial de Farmacia de Granada Instituto de Biomedicina de Granada, Hospital Virgen de las Nieves, Granada, SpainBackground: In Spain, hospital medicines are assessed and selected by local Pharmacy and Therapeutics committees (PTCs). Of all the drugs assessed, cancer drugs are particularly important because of their budgetary impact and the sometimes arguable added value with respect to existing alternatives. This study analyzed the PTC drug selection process and the main objective was to evaluate the degree of compliance of prescriptions for oncology drugs with their criteria for use.Methods: This was a retrospective observational study (May 2007 to April 2010) of PTC-assessed drugs. The variables measured to describe the committee's activity were number of drugs assessed per year and number of drugs included in any of these settings: without restrictions, with criteria for use, and not included in formulary. These drugs were also analyzed by therapeutic group. To assess the degree of compliance of prescriptions, a score was calculated to determine whether prescriptions for bevacizumab, cetuximab, trastuzumab, and bortezomib were issued in accordance with PTC drug use criteria.Results: The PTC received requests for inclusion of 40 drugs, of which 32 were included in the hospital formulary (80.0%). Criteria for use were established for 28 (87.5%) of the drugs included. In total, 293 patients were treated with the four cancer drugs in eight different therapeutic indications. The average prescription compliance scores were as follows: bevacizumab, 83% for metastatic colorectal cancer, 100% for metastatic breast cancer, and 82.3% for non-small-cell lung cancer; cetuximab, 62.0% for colorectal cancer and 50% for head and neck cancer; trastuzumab, 95.1% for early breast cancer and 82.4% for metastatic breast cancer; and bortezomib, 63.7% for multiple myeloma.Conclusion: The degree of compliance with criteria for use of cancer drugs was reasonably high. PTC functions need to be changed so that they can carry out more innovative tasks, such as monitoring conditions for drug use.Keywords: decision-making, drug selection, drug utilization, formulary, neoplasm, Pharmacy and Therapeutics committee

The third Global Patient Safety Challenge, Medication Without Harm, was launched in 2017 by the World Health Organization with the goal of reducing the already well-known severe preventable medication-related harm by 50% over the next 5 years. Nothing suggested that, two years later, the world would suffer a terrible pandemic, which has been a much greater challenge than the aforementioned one and that would put it to test from the first stages of the medication use process. The rapid pace imposed by the pandemic has created new risks in the use of medication in those affected by COVID-19 and in the population due to organizational changes in the provision of health care in health services. Therefore, prudent prescribing is becoming more important than ever in health systems. This article aims to analyze the main risks produced during the pandemic period and offer Primary Care professionals an update and a reminder of the main aspects related to the safety use of medications., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To identify publishers of pharmacotherapeutic information not found in biomedical journals that focuses on evaluating and providing advice on medicines and to develop a search engine to access this information., Methods: Compiling web sites that publish information on the rational use of medicines and have no commercial interests. Free-access web sites in Spanish, Galician, Catalan or English. Designing a search engine using the Google "custom search" application., Results: Overall 159 internet addresses were compiled and were classified into 9 labels. We were able to recover the information from the selected sources using a search engine, which is called "AlquimiA" and available from http://www.elcomprimido.com/FARHSD/AlquimiA.htm., Conclusions: The main sources of pharmacotherapeutic information not published in biomedical journals were identified. The search engine is a useful tool for searching and accessing "grey literature" on the internet., (Copyright © 2010 SEFH. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)