Medication reconciliation at admission to surgical departments

We aim to determine the prevalence of reconciliation errors (REs) at admission to surgery departments, report their potential clinical impact and analyse possible risk factors.

Prospective observational study was conducted for 8 months in a regional public hospital in Spain. The study included patients consecutively hospitalized in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology or Department of Angiology and Vascular Surgery from May through December 2010. At 24-48 hours after hospital admission, the pre-admission pharmacological treatment of patients was compared with the medication received in hospital to identify REs, which were classified by type and potential severity. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted with the presence of RE as dependent variable.

The study included 176 patients, 60.8% of whom were aged >65 years and consumed a mean of 5.55 (±4.33) drugs. 55.1% had ≥1 RE, with a mean of 3.21 REs per patient [95% confidence interval (CI; 2.72-3.70)]. The most frequent RE was drug omission (84.1%). No clinical risk was posed by 50.5% of the REs. Multivariate analysis evidenced fourfold higher risk of an RE in patients admitted for elective versus emergency surgery and a 1.35-fold higher risk in patients receiving a larger number of drugs.

There was a high prevalence of REs among patients admitted to the surgical departments, most frequently the omission of a drug. The risk of an RE was higher in patients admitted for elective versus emergency surgery, as well as with the receipt of a larger number of drugs before admission.