Optimizing vancomycin therapeutic drug monitoring compliance in pediatric oncology: towards personalized medication management

Abstract

Aim: Vancomycin, a crucial treatment for Gram-positive bacteria, necessitates therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) to prevent treatment failures. We investigated the healthcare professional's compliance toward TDM of vancomycin recommendations and follow-up levels. Materials & methods: We collected data from 485 patients who received vancomycin in the Children's Cancer Hospital Egypt 57357 medical records system (Cerner) over 4 months, from January to April 2020. Results: Our data shows that only 54% of patients had TDM requests from healthcare professionals for the total patients who received vancomycin treatment. The healthcare professionals' compliance with the recommendations was 91.7%, while the follow-up levels were 66.7%. Conclusion: While overall adherence to recommendations is strong, enhancing compliance with follow-up levels remains a priority for improvement.

Keywords: TDM recommendations; healthcare team compliance; pediatric oncology; personalized medication management; personalized medicine; precision medicine; vancomycin.