Emergency medicine pharmacist involvement reduced time from ED arrival to anticoagulation reversal agent administration by 75.6 minutes in patients with acute hemorrhage.
Does emergency medicine pharmacist involvement reduce time to anticoagulation reversal agent administration in patients with acute hemorrhage?
The involvement of emergency medicine pharmacists in managing anticoagulation-associated hemorrhage significantly reduces the time to administration of reversal agents.
Absolute Event Rate: 0% vs 0%
Introduction: Intracranial and extracranial hemorrhages are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, particularly for patients on anticoagulation. Emergency medicine pharmacists (EMPs) are critical in identifying patients who are on anticoagulation, providing recommendations on anticoagulation reversal agent selection and dosing, and ensuring prompt reversal agent administration. The goal of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to determine the impact of EMP involvement on time to anticoagulation reversal and patient outcomes during anticoagulation-associated hemorrhage management. Methods: A medical librarian performed a literature search in PubMed, MEDLINE (Ovid), EMBASE (Ovid), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and the Cochrane Library (Wiley) from inception to March 2024 for all types of anticoagulants and all types of life-threatening bleeding that required emergent reversal. Newcastle-Ottawa was used to assess risk of bias and Grading Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) to assess level of certainty in the evidence. Random effects models estimating mean differences (MD) and 95% confidence intervals are reported. Results: There were 2,228 titles and abstracts screened, with 40 undergoing full-text evaluation. Five observational studies including 177 patients who received an anticoagulation reversal agent with EMP involvement and 157 patients who received an anticoagulation reversal agent without EMP involvement were included. Time from emergency department (ED) arrival to anticoagulation reversal agent administration and time from reversal agent medication order to administration were faster with an EMP involvement (MD -75.6 minutes, 95% CI -101.7 to -49.5 and MD -18.7 minutes, 95% CI -23.5 to -14.0, respectively). There was no difference in short-term mortality. The included studies had a high risk of bias and were deemed very low quality of evidence. Conclusions: EMP involvement in anticoagulation reversal for patients with acute hemorrhage reduces the time to anticoagulation reversal agent administration. Large, high-quality studies are needed to determine the value of EMPs in improving patient-centered outcomes for patients with acute hemorrhage requiring anticoagulation reversal.
Brown et al. (Sun,) reported a other. Emergency medicine pharmacist involvement reduced time from ED arrival to anticoagulation reversal agent administration by 75.6 minutes in patients with acute hemorrhage.