Background Pharmacists have important responsibilities inside a multi-professional renal transplant team.

Purpose This work aimed to evaluate the impact of pharmaceutical intervention in the education process and compliance to immunosuppressive therapy.

Material and methods This project was approved by the local ethics committee and conducted in a large transplant-specialised hospital. Adult kidney transplant recipients were identified and recruited by a trained pharmacist within two days after the transplant surgery and received standard immunosuppression therapy. After signing the informed consent patients were randomised to receive a planned intervention of the transplant pharmacist (group 1) or to follow the regular orientation offered by nurses only (group 2). The pharmaceutical-planned intervention consisted of detailed education about indications, doses, frequencies, and schedules for administration of immunosuppressive drugs and these actions were performed at day 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, 28, 60 and 90 days after transplant. A formal evaluation was applied using a standardised scale and a predefined questionnaire to assess compliance and knowledge at days 10, 28 and 90.

Results So far, 89 patients were randomised, 43 in group 1 and 46 in group 2. Preliminary results showed a mean age of 46, 62% male and 40% Caucasian. Regarding the education level, 52% and 30% of patients had not achieved the ninth grade in group 1 and 2, respectively. At day 28 and 90, 85% and 82% of patients showed compliance to immunosuppression in group 1 vs. 77% and 60% in group 2, respectively. Regarding the patients’ knowledge about the use of immunosuppressive at days 10, 28 and 90, 85%, 88% and 95% of patients in group 1 showed well understanding about immunosuppressive medication vs. 73% (p = 0.049), while 82% and 80%, in group 2 respectively.

Conclusion These preliminary results showed that the intervention of the pharmacist trends to improve the compliance and knowledge of immunosuppression therapy.

Acknowledgements Hospital do Rim.

No conflict of interest.