Background Optimising resource management is a major stake in health economics. In this way, managing costly injectable medications which are administered ‘dose by weight’ is a considerable concern to hospital pharmacists. Tenecteplase is one of the drugs whose use is likely to generate losses as only the 10 000 IU presentation is marketed in our country, and vials are often not wholly used.

Purpose To evaluate product losses at our hospital and the shortfall due to the non-commercialisation of other tenecteplase dosages in our country.

Material and methods This was a prospective study over a period of 1 year (from 4 January 2014 to 3 January 2015), focusing on 10 000 IU tenecteplase vials that were reconstituted and used in our hospital’s cardiology and emergency departments. Evaluation of leftovers was performed both by volumetric method and by weighing.

Results For the 50 vials studied over the study period, the volume of unused reconstituted drug leftovers varied between 0 ml and 4.8 mL per vial, with an average of 1.99 mL and a total volume of 99.32 mL. The financial study reported the results presented in table 1.

Conclusion The losses estimated at 19.86% of the budget dedicated to the purchase of tenecteplase at our hospital reflects the need for marketing of other dosages that are already available in other countries (6000 IU and 8000 IU). In the meantime, as some studies have shown the possibility of aliquoting and conserving reconstituted tenecteplase, it would be advisable to set up a centralised unit for sterile preparation of customised doses that would achieve savings on tenecteplase as well as on other expensive injectable products.

No conflict of interest.