Sydney Pharmacy School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
PLoS One. 2019 May 3;14(5):e0215837. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0215837. eCollection 2019.
In recent years, medication shortages have become a growing worldwide issue. This scoping review aimed to systematically synthesise the literature to report on the economic, clinical, and humanistic impacts of medication shortages on patient outcomes.
Medline, Embase, Global Health, PsycINFO and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts were searched using the two key concepts of medicine shortage and patient outcomes. Articles were limited to the English language, human studies and there were no limits to the year of publication. Manuscripts included contained information regarding the shortage of a scheduled medication and had gathered data regarding the economic, clinical, and/or humanistic outcomes of drug shortages on human patients.
We found that drug shortages were predominantly reported to have adverse economic, clinical and humanistic outcomes to patients. Patients were more commonly reported to have increased out of pocket costs, rates of drug errors, adverse events, mortality, and complaints during times of shortage. There were also reports of equivalent and improved patient outcomes in some cases.
The results of this review provide valuable insights into the impact drug shortages have on patient outcomes. The majority of studies reported medication shortages resulted in negative patient clinical, economic and humanistic outcomes.
近年来，药物短缺已成为一个日益严重的全球性问题。本范围综述旨在系统地综合文献，报告药物短缺对患者结局的经济、临床和人文影响。
使用药物短缺和患者结局这两个关键概念，在 Medline、Embase、全球健康、PsycINFO 和国际药学文摘中进行检索。文章仅限于英文、人类研究，且对出版年份没有限制。手稿包含有关计划药物短缺的信息，并收集了有关药物短缺对人类患者的经济、临床和/或人文结局的数据。
我们发现药物短缺主要被报道对患者有不良的经济、临床和人文结局。在短缺期间，患者的自付费用增加、药物错误、不良事件、死亡率和投诉的发生率更高。在某些情况下，也有报告称患者的结局等效或改善。
本综述的结果提供了药物短缺对患者结局影响的有价值的见解。大多数研究报告药物短缺导致患者的临床、经济和人文结局负面。
