[Practice of compounding parenteral nutrition in Portugal; comparison with the Spanish guidelines]

To evaluate the practices of neonatal parenteral nutrition (PN) compounding in Portugal and the agreement to the recommendations from the Spanish Consensus on Compounding of Parenteral Nutrition Mixtures 2008.

Survey based on an electronic questionnaire on PN preparation emailed, between July and October 2009, to the pharmacists or nurses responsible for preparing neonatal PN in the 50 public and private Portuguese hospitals with neonatal special care units.

From the 30 hospitals where neonatal PN was prepared, 22 (73%) responded to the questionnaire. In 76.7% hospitals the PN was prepared in the hospital pharmacy and the remaining in the neonatal unit. In most hospitals the PN was only prepared in the working days. In half of cases the professional responsible for the preparation received the prescription in electronic support. The problems related with interpretation and validations of the prescriptions were not unusual (14-41%). Most of the Portuguese hospitals referred practices in agreement with the main recommendations from the Spanish Consensus regarding the documentation, equipment and facilities, human resources and labeling. In relation to PN admixtures, most hospitals follow the recommendations on deadlines to use, protection from light, use of terminal filters for infusion, and physical and chemical control by visual inspection and microbiological control.

The results from this study provide a good insight of the practice of preparation of neonatal NP in Portugal. The comparison with the Spanish Consensus contributes to identify weaknesses.