Identification of Drug-Related Problems and Investigation of Related Factors in Patients with COVID-19: An Observational Study

Objective: Clinical prognosis of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) may be severe and unexpected. Patients may quickly progress to respiratory failure, infections, multiple organ dysfunction, and sepsis. The main objective of this study is to investigate the drug-related problems of patients with COVID-19 and related factors. Method: A prospective observational study was conducted on patients with COVID-19 between September 2020 and May 2021. Patients’ demographics, comorbid diseases, prescribed medicines and laboratory findings were recorded. Drug-related problems (DRPs) were identified by a clinical pharmacist according to recent guidelines, UpToDate® clinical decision support system and evidence-based medicine. Results: The median age of 107 patients was 64 and 50.46% of them were male. The median number of comorbidities was 3 (2-4) per patient. The majority of the patients had at least one comorbidity (88.79%) other than COVID-19 and the most frequent comorbidities were hypertension, diabetes mellitus and coronary artery disease. The total number of DRPs was recorded as 201 and at least one DRP was seen in 75 out of 107 patients. The median number of DRPs was 2 (0-8). In multivariate model, number of comorbidities (odss ratio (OR)=1.952; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.07-3.54, p