Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Impact of Computer-Aided Warfarin Dosing in a Saudi Arabian Cardiac Centre

Ahmad A Almeman^1,2 , S Rasool²

¹School of Pharmacy, Qassim University; ²Anticoagulation Clinic, Prince Sultan Cardiac Center (PSCC), Buraidah, Al Qassim, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

For correspondence:- Ahmad Almeman Email: ahmadalmeman@gmail.coml Tel:+00966548889712

Received: 28 December 2012 Accepted: 11 October 2013 Published: 24 December 2013

Citation: Almeman AA, Rasool S. Impact of Computer-Aided Warfarin Dosing in a Saudi Arabian Cardiac Centre. Trop J Pharm Res 2013; 12(6):1065-1070 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v12i6.30

© 2013 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To compare the efficacy of computer-aided dosing using Coagclinic (a web-based software) with physician dosing in patients receiving warfarin for various cardiac indications.

Methods: In order to calculate the effectiveness of physician managed anticoagulation dosing, we calculated the “percentage of time international normalized ratio, INR, was in the therapeutic range" (TTR) for a random sample of 70 patients in the center. For each patient, 4 INR values were taken at 4 consecutive visits, before and after the installation of Coagclinic. Data on the doses given by physicians were collected at each visit and compared them with the pharmacy-based computer aided dosing system data.

Results: After performing paired samples t-test of doses based on the physician group with those based on the computer system (mean -1.5654 ± 2.09 ), a statistically significant difference was found (p < 0.015). Furthermore, the patients kept at TTR by physicians amounted to 26 % compared to 70 % by the software.

Conclusion: The difference between TTR managed by physicians and those managed using CoagClinic™ software is statistically significant. It appears that the software improves the effectiveness of warfarin dosing in patients.

Keywords: Anticoagulation, Computer dosing, Physician dosing, Cardiac, Warfarin