Management of Warfarin Therapy: A New Point-Of-Care

Objective of the book it to introduce the implementation of point of care INR monitoringservice by community pharmacists for optimizing the therapy outcomes of Warfarin, used widely for its anticoagulant activity both as a treatment andprophylaxis. Methods: This prospective, controlled, staggered parallel designstudy was conducted in selected community pharmacies associated withgeneral practitioners. The patients in the intervention arm received pointof care INR measurement and anticoagulant management includingassessment of clinical and quality of life endpoints by their pharmacistsin collaboration with their general practitioners. Result: 82 patients wererecruited into the study in 5 community pharmacies and all these patientswere under the medical care of 7 general medical practitioners. About 44 %(n = 36) of the patients recruited into the intervention group submittedtheir retrospective INR reports which was considered as pre interventiondata and used to compare the clinical outcome against post interventionphases. It was found that the patients in the post intervention group hada statistically significant (p < 0.05) control in the INR values than the preintervention group.