Prescription of transdermal patches in Colombia: A real-world evidence study

Transdermal drug delivery has contributed positively to medical practice. However, prescriptions that do not meet minimum quality criteria and medication errors are common.

The objective was to determine how transdermal patches are being prescribed to a group of patients in Colombia, the compliance with established requirements of such prescriptions and the comparisons between correct and incorrect prescriptions.

This was a cross-sectional study of prescriptions for transdermal patches using data from a population-based drug dispensing database between December 1 and 31, 2019. Medical prescriptions were randomly reviewed, establishing whether the drugs were appropriately prescribed by the manufacturer's indications or national regulations. Descriptive and bivariate analysis was performed.

A total of 415 prescriptions were reviewed; the prescription was provided to 412 patients with a median age of 76.9 years, and 63.3% were women. Rivastigmine was the most prescribed transdermal patch (57.8%). 66.3% of all prescriptions did not meet the minimum appropriate prescribing standards, especially those for rivastigmine (97.1%). The 7.0% of all prescriptions had posology errors, especially prescriptions for buprenorphine (43.8%). Older patients (84.4% vs 52.5%), from the Pacific region (34.4% vs 23.7%), with manual formulations (22.1% vs 0.8%), dementia (49.0% vs 6.8%), and in management with lipid-lowering drugs (41.8% vs 30.5%), presented incorrect transdermal patch formulations more frequently (p < 0.05).

The high proportion of inappropriately prescribed transdermal patches should draw the attention of those responsible for health care to improve the training of physicians and create prescription quality verification systems.