DOI: 10.36347/sajp

Pages: 331-336

Since therapeutic range of digoxin is extremely narrow, many patients have been admitted to emergency department due to digoxin intoxication. Therefore, the level of blood digoxin should be followed at frequent intervals in patients who are taking digoxin treatment. In this study, we aimed to evaluate inappropriateness or erroneous practices and to identify their reasons in therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of digoxin usage, retrospectively. In this study, we analyzed the results of serum digoxin levels of 1186 inpatients and outpatients from Laboratory Information System (LIS) from January 2013 to July 2015. Results of serum digoxin levels varied from 0.0 nmol/L to 6.9 nmol/L. 47.9% of digoxin levels were in subtherapeutic range, 45.4% of were in therapeutic range, and 6.7% of were in toxic range. Serum digoxin levels were higher in females and in 70-79 ages of patients. TDM of digoxin is useful for enhancing the therapeutic benefits of digoxin and minimizing the incidence of adverse drug reactions. In this study, TDM digoxin usage were evaluated as inappropriate. This was likely due to insufficient information about patient's drug taking time and incorrect timing of collecting the blood samples.