Methods to control anticancer chemotherapy preparations ranked by risk analysis

The observed increase in cancer led to a continuous rise in anticancer drug preparations in Hospital Centres. The quality and security of these preparations are essential to ensure the efficacy and to limit the risk of iatrogenic toxicity. Several methods have been described to secure the process of preparation (i.e. non-analytical methods for the control during the fabrication; analytical methods for the final product evaluation). These different methods have been presented in many studies, in particular in descriptive studies, but in practice, selecting a method is difficult and related to needs and hospital priorities. Therefore, we decided to conduct this present review focused on various existing methods allowing enhancement in security of anti-cancer drugs preparation process. A proactive hazard analysis method was applied, considering preparation and control steps, to discuss the choice of a method in terms of quality and security and to identify potential risks of failure. The results show that none method is perfect. Methods with the lowest criticality score are the robotization closely followed by Drugcam® in the case of re-labelling of all containers. According to these elements a University Hospital Centre could consider these risk indexesimplementing control methods.