Background and importance The use of intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIg) has increased as a result of their therapeutic usefulness in a great number of diseases. Despite this, IVIg label indications remain limited, so it is interesting to study their off-label use.

Aim and objectives To describe the use of IVIg in our hospital for 3 months and to determine if they have been used for labelled indications.

Material and methods This was a retrospective study (October–December 2018) and a descriptive analysis of the use of IVIg per patient and clinical indication. Information was collected from the hospital’s information systems and the computer records of the Farmatools software.

Results Eighty-nine patients received IVIG during the study period, with an average age of 61 years at the end of the study (3 months–86.7 years); there were 40 (45%) men and 49 (55%) women. When IVIg were used as replacement therapy, the dosage used was 200–400 mg/kg every 3–5 weeks. In the remaining indications, the dose used per treatment cycle was 1–2 g/kg divided over 2–5 days. IVIG were used for labelled indications in 80% of patients (71/89) compared with 20% for off-label indications (18/89). Among the latter, the indications were: demyelinating neuropathies (6/18), myasthenia gravis (2/18), myopathies (2/18), encephalitis/encephalomyelitis (2/18), Morvan syndrome (1/18), syndrome paraneoplastic (1/18), refractory atopic dermatitis (1/18), paraneoplastic dermatomyositis (1/18), scleroderma (1/28) and antisynthetase syndrome (1/18).

Conclusion and relevance The use of IVIG in unauthorised indications was frequent (20%), mainly in the field of neurology. This justifies the development of a protocol for the use of IVIG in this field for those indications with more scientific evidence and more common use: demyelinating neuropathies, myasthenia gravis and myopathies.

References and/or acknowledgements No conflict of interest.