Impact of pharmacist intervention in reducing vancomycin-associated acute kidney injury: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Aims The aim was to quantify the relationship between pharmacist intervention and vancomycin-associated acute kidney injury (AKI). Methods Electronic databases were searched up to August 2020 for meta-analyses of cohort studies and/or randomized controlled trials. Studies that compared the incidence of AKI in patients between post- and prepharmacist intervention were investigated. The primary outcome was incidence of AKI. We also evaluated the influence of pharmacist intervention in risk factors of vancomycin-associated AKI. Results The search strategy retrieved 1744 studies and 34 studies with 19 298 participants were included (22 published articles and 12 abstracts from conference proceedings). Compared with the preintervention group, the postintervention group patients had a significantly lower incidence of vancomycin-associated AKI: 7.3% for post- and 9.6% for preintervention (odds ratio [OR] 0.52, 95% confidence interval [CI]; 0.41, 0.67], P < .00001). The rate of attaining target concentration was significantly higher in the post- than preintervention group (OR 2.86, 95% CI [2.23, 3.67], P < .00001). The postintervention group significantly improved the percentage of serum creatinine laboratory tests than preintervention group (OR = 3.24, 95% CI 2.02, 5.19], P < .00001). Patients postintervention had markedly lower risk of mortality than preintervention patients (OR 0.47, 95% CI [0.31, 0.72], P = .0004). Conclusion Pharmacist intervention in vancomycin treatment significantly decreased the rate of vancomycin-associated AKI, while improving efficacy and reducing mortality. We speculate that this is because the pharmacist interventions optimized the rationality of vancomycin therapy, monitoring of vancomycin trough concentration and the monitoring of patients' renal function.