Texas Children’s draws roughly 100 therapeutic drug levels per day to examine the presence and the amount of specific drugs in the bloodstream of children. These levels determine how well a patient’s body breaks down the drug and how it interacts with other medications.
“With most medications, you need a certain level of drug in your bloodstream to obtain the desired effect,” said Brady Moffett, a clinical pharmacy specialist at Texas Children’s. “Some medications are harmful if the level rises too high and some do not work if the levels are too low.”
To promote quality improvement and to continue to ensure the safety of our patients, Texas Children’s Department of Pharmacy and Clinical Chemistry Service in the Department of Pathology have produced an online, comprehensive guide to help clinicians monitor the therapeutic drug levels in a patient’s bloodstream to ensure they are within a safe and effective range.
Drug level testing is especially important in children taking certain medications to treat health problems like abnormal heart rhythms, diabetes, epileptic seizures and bacterial infections, as well as organ transplant patients who must take immunosuppressant drugs during their lifetime.
Produced specifically for pediatrics, Texas Children’s 92-page therapeutic drug monitoring guide is the first of its kind produced at a children’s hospital and represents a multidisciplinary collaboration among our physicians, pharmacists and laboratory personnel.
“We worked extensively with specialists across multiple service lines to gather their input and expertise to bring this project to fruition,” Moffett said.
Moffett co-edited the therapeutic drug monitoring manual with Dr. Sridevi Devaraj, director of Clinical Chemistry and Point of Care Testing at Texas Children’s.
“The online version of this manual will be updated in real time as new drugs and technologies emerge,” Devaraj said. “It will provide us with better guidance on how to safely adjust the proper dosage of medications to meet our patients’ individual medical needs.”
Click here to access Texas Children’s Guide to Therapeutic Drug Monitoring.