Background Medicines reconciliation has been proved to be a safe and effective strategy for preventing medicines errors. However, the use of this strategy and the need for its implementation in cancer patients has not been adequately studied.

Purpose To assess the impact of an intervention aimed at decreasing medicines reconciliation errors.

Materials and methods Interventional, randomised, controlled clinical trial included patients diagnosed with cancer who had a new chemotherapy regimen and were taking home medicines during chemotherapy. Study participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups, the experimental group who were interviewed by a pharmacist in cycle 1, and a comparison group (control) who were interviewed in cycle 3 to check for discrepancies from the beginning of chemotherapy. A pharmacological history was obtained from the patient’s history and confirmed with an interview. Discrepancies were recorded and classified as justified or reconciliation errors. The primary endpoint was the difference between the number of reconciliation errors avoided in the first cycle in the experimental and control groups.

Results 147 patients were included, 76 were randomised to the experimental group and 71 to the control group. Patient baseline characteristics are detailed in table 1. The percentage of patients with reconciliation errors (61.8% vs. 56.3%, p > 0.05) in the two groups was similar. The number of reconciliation errors avoided in cycle 1 in the intervention group was 39 (83%) and 2 (5%) in control group [ARR = 78% (95% CI = 65% to 91%)].

Conclusions Medicines reconciliation in cancer patients has proven to be a highly effective intervention in reducing reconciliation errors during the first cycle of chemotherapy regimen.

No conflict of interest.