[The clinical usefulness of cyclosporine therapeutic monitoring].

Purpose: To review the cyclosporine therapy indications and evaluate determine the incidence of cyclosporine blood levels outside the therapeutic range in patients under treatment, to evaluate the practical utility of the drug monitoring.
Patients and Methods: The blood concentration of monoclonal cyclosporine was monitored in 225 patients by FPIA method, using the trough concentration.
Results: 58% of patients had a drug blood level within the therapeutic range, 26% and 16% of them had respectively, a value below and down this range. After correcting the drug dosage, 75% and 68% of the patients of the two subgroups had a cyclosporine blood value within the therapeutic range.
Conclusions: Cyclosporine is increasingly used in transplant recipients as well as in patients with other immunological diseases. Since the number of patients, with inappropriate serum levels of cyclosporine is high, therapeutic monitoring of blood levels of the drug are of paramount importance.