Manrique-Rodríguez, SilviaLafuente-Cabrero, ElizabethSanjurjo-Sáez, María2021-06-182021-06-182021Manrique-Rodríguez S, Heras-Hidalgo I, Pernia-López MS, Herranz-Alonso A, Del Río Pisabarro MC, Suárez-Mier MB, et al. Standardization and chemical characterization of intravenous therapy in adult patients. Drugs R D. 2021 Mar; 21(1): 39-64. DOI: 10.1007/s40268-020-00329-w1174-5886http://hdl.handle.net/10230/47931Background: Intravenous drug administration is associated with potential complications, such as phlebitis. The physiochemical characteristics of the infusate play a very important role in some of these problems. Aim: The aim of this study was to standardize the dilutions of intravenous drugs most commonly used in hospitalized adult patients and to characterize their pH, osmolarity and cytotoxic nature to better guide the selection of the most appropriate vascular access. Methods: The project was conducted in three phases: (i) standardization of intravenous therapy, which was conducted using a modified double-round Delphi method; (ii) characterization of the dilutions agreed on in the previous phase by means of determining the osmolarity and pH of each of the agreed concentrations, and recording the vesicant nature based on the information in literature; and (iii) algorithm proposal for selecting the most appropriate vascular access, taking into account the information gathered in the previous phases. Results: In total, 112 drugs were standardized and 307 different admixtures were assessed for pH, osmolarity and vesicant nature. Of these, 123 admixtures (40%), had osmolarity values >600 mOsm/L, pH < 4 or > 9, or were classified as vesicants. In these cases, selection of the most suitable route of infusion and vascular access device is crucial to minimize the risk of phlebitis-type complications. Conclusions: Increasing safety of intravenous therapy should be a priority in the healthcare settings. Knowing the characteristics of drugs to assess the risk involved in their administration related to their physicochemical nature may be useful to guide decision making regarding the most appropriate vascular access and devices.application/pdfengCopyright © The Author(s) 2020, corrected publication 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.Errors de medicacióTeràpia intravenosaFlebitisinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40268-020-00329-winfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess