Effectiveness of Pharmacist Intervention on Capecitabine Relative Dose Intensity, Adherence, Knowledge & Safety Among Cancer Patients in Malaysia

Summary

Over the past decade, oral administration of chemotherapy has significantly increased and is anticipated to continue to grow. Despite the conveniences, these oral regimens can be complex and pose challenge to patient adherence. Further safety concerns are warranted due to insufficient patient education, general perception of reduced toxicity with oral treatment, improper prescribing practice, and the lack of monitoring of observable adverse effects.

Therefore, effective medication counselling and patient education is vital to empower patients and their caregivers to increase adherence and safely managed medication to achieve optimal treatment outcome.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of pharmacist intervention with structured oral chemotherapy education and patient monitoring on capecitabine treatment effectiveness (Relative Dose Intensity (RDI), Adherence and Persistence), safety outcomes (Adverse Event, Drug Related Problem and Health service utilization) and chemotherapy knowledge and self-efficiency among cancer patient care in Penang, a northern state oncology referral centre.

There are numerous published studies of pharmaceutical care implementations focusing mainly on in-patient setting and currently evolving in ambulatory cancer patients especially in western countries compared to Asian region. However systematic reviews show major gap still exist with paucity of scientific evidence on the effectiveness of therapeutic educational interventions for improving patient safety and adherence to oral chemotherapy mainly due to study design and method that are unable to strongly prove the outcome.

Hence highlighting the novelty and significance for this research using randomized controlled design, standardized \& validated tools for multimodal pharmacist intervention, long-term clinical outcome such as RDI with longitudinal assessment till treatment completion.

Conditions

• Solid Tumor, Adult

Interventions

OTHER

Pharmacist-led Oral Chemo Care Program (POCCP)

Structured intensified pharmaceutical care program for patients ongoing oral chemotherapy treatment. Led by oncology experienced clinical pharmacist and run alongside oncologist patient review at the clinic or daycare. It utilizes structured educational material (for patients) and monitoring guideline or checklists (for pharmacists) during provision of service at each clinic visit such as patient education, pre-treatment review, medication reconciliation, prescription screening (dose, regime, supportive meds), adherence, adverse drug event monitoring and treatment recommendations on basis of agreed protocols. Pharmacist scheduled additional review within 1-week interval of start of oral chemotherapy at clinic or via phone call (according to patient's preference) will also be conducted to review patients taking their oral medications at home, assess adherence and symptom experienced to provide individualized recommendations or support to patients.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Universiti Sains Malaysia

  collaborator OTHER

• Ministry of Health, Malaysia

  lead OTHER_GOV

Principal Investigators

• Balamurugan Tangiisuran, PhD · Universiti Sains Malaysia

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-12-10

Primary Completion

2021-11-30

Completion

2021-11-30

Countries

• Malaysia

Study Locations