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Volume 12 Issue 4 ( October-December ) 2023

Original Articles

Cost Analysis Of Drug Wastage In An Oncology Day Care
Dr. Aniket Goenka, Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma, Dr. Ajay Yadav, Dr. Purvish Parikh, Dr. Hemant Malhotra

Introduction: Drug wastage is defined as the amount of drugs issued but discarded without being given to the patient. Drugs used in oncology are usually prescribed based on weight or body surface area. There are studies that have shown significant drug wastage in oncology centers. This study aims to quantify drug wastage in an oncology center and identify the drugs that are more prone to wastage. Methods: It’s a retrospective observational study aimed at quantifying drug wastage in a daycare of an oncology unit. The drug wasted for each drug in a given prescription was calculated. The Cost of each given drug was acquired from the pharmacy and was used to calculate the total price of the drug prescribed and the total price of the drug wasted. Results : a total of 281 prescriptions were studied which had a total of 32 drugs. In all 195715 mg of drugs were acquired of which 8358 mg (4.27%) of drug was wasted. Drug wastage for each drug varied from 1.65% to 36.6%. The highest wastage among drugs that were prescribed 5 or more times were carfilzomib (36.6%), dacarbazine (10.5%), carboplatin (8.5%), pemetrexed (8.06%) and nab-paclitaxel (7.2%). The total cost of drugs that were acquired during the study period was Rs. 60,41,271 of which drugs worth Rs. 1,05,445 (1.7%) were wasted. The total expenditure on drugs that were given on flat dosing and thus are not prone to wastage was Rs. 38,33,236. Wastage for drugs that are dosed based on weight or body surface area was 4.7% (1,05,445 of 22,08,035). 5 drugs with the highest contribution to the cost of drug wastage nab-paclitaxel (n=20;17.9%), carfilzomib (n=5; 17.2%), carboplatin(n=82;15.9%), trastuzumab (n= 8; 11.7%) and paclitaxel (n=51;8.3%). Conclusion :Approximately 5% of drug wastage was seen in our study. The study identifies nab-paclitaxel and carfilzomib as drugs that are prone to expensive wastage. mitigation strategies such as vial sharing, or the availability of multiple-strength vials should be explored to counter drug wastage.

 
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