Full Text

Turn on search term navigation

© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Users of benzodiazepines (BZDs) should have their quality of life monitored to minimize the risks associated with long-term treatments. The aim of this study is to use the EuroQol 5D-3L to analyze the quality of life of 127 patients under treatment with BZDs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that lorazepam comprises 25.49% of all dispensing requests, and that the mean duration of BZDs treatments is four years (range: 0.3–25). When rating their general health status, BZDs users reported 59.29 points out of 100. Thirty-two percent of patients reported mobility problems; 16.5% reported having a lot of pain or discomfort despite being treated with BZDs, and 16.54% used a BZD together with an opioid analgesic. The EuroQol 5D-3L dimension “anxiety/depression” showed that, despite the use of BZDs, 48.2% of the patients reported being moderately anxious or depressed and 13.4% described themselves as very anxious or depressed. Nevertheless, 37.8% of BZDs users were identified as potential candidates to follow a BZD deprescription plan. In conclusion, BZDs users showed a low quality of life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Older patients and females have been identified as groups of patients that could benefit from integrating the use of the EuroQol 5D-3L instrument into the protocols of the pharmaceutical care follow up.

Details

Title
Quality of Life Assessment in Patients Using Benzodiazepines during the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Community Pharmacy Using EuroQol 5D-3L
Author
Daida Alberto Armas 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Santana Ayala, Juan Ramón 1 ; Yanira Román Castillo 2 ; Arturo Hardisson de la Torre 3 ; Carmen Rubio Armendáriz 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Toxicology Department, Universidad de La Laguna, 38071 Canary Islands, Spain; Community Pharmacy, 38010 Canary Islands, Spain 
 Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria Hospital, 38010 Canary Islands, Spain 
 Toxicology Department, Universidad de La Laguna, 38071 Canary Islands, Spain 
First page
19
Publication year
2023
Publication date
2023
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
22264787
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2779613933
Copyright
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.