gms | German Medical Science

Background and aim: The Institute of Clinical Pharmacology at the TU Dresden offers a drug information service for patients, which seeks to provide independent and evidence-based information on all drug-related questions. The presented study analyzes whether increased information needs can be detected for specific drug groups or patient subgroups.

Material and method: Patients who contacted the service were interviewed concerning their socio-demographic characteristics, reason for request, number and kind of drugs taken and present diseases. All requests were documented by means of a questionnaire. The data were recorded in a relational database. In the present evaluation all requests from January to December 2008 were analyzed descriptively with a main focus on information needs by the patients.

Results: In the evaluated period, 1457 requests were registered in total. Women used the service more frequently (63.3%) than men. The largest percentage of requests originated from the age group 61 to 80 years (40.5%). The drugs that were most commonly the reason for a request were drugs for the cardiovascular system (26.8%) and drugs for the nervous system (21.2%). Although only 2% of all drugs taken were systemic antiinfectives or antineoplastic/immunomodulating agents respectively, these drugs were relatively often the reason for a request. 55% of all patients taking a systemic antiinfective also named this drug as reason for the request, 40% had a question about their antineoplastic/immunomodulation agent.

Conclusions: We identified an increased information need in elderly patients. Commonly prescribed drugs present one of the main reasons for a request, showing that there is a general information need. The high number of requests about systemic antiinfectives and antineoplastic/immunomodulating agents may be due to the fact that these are prescribed for severe diseases and can show severe side effects. Thus, a specific information need can be assumed for this drug group.