Pharmacy assistant in small hospital discovered diluted drugs by accident

The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

By: Maria Babbage, The Canadian Press

Tuesday, Apr. 30, 2013 at 6:20 PM | Comments: 0

TORONTO - A pharmacy assistant at a small Ontario hospital discovered by accident that chemotherapy drugs administered to 1,200 cancer patients in two provinces were diluted, a legislative committee heard Tuesday.

The problem was caught March 20 when a pharmacy assistant at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre doubled-checked the label of a bag containing a mixture of saline and the drug gemcitabine from Marchese Hospital Solutions.

The assistant, who wants to remain anonymous, noticed that the label on the Marchese bag was different from the one from their previous supplier Baxter, said Laura Freeman, the chief financial officer of the 400-bed hospital.

It was the first day the hospital was using the bags from Marchese, which is why they still had some left over from Baxter, she said.

The assistant noticed that the Marchese label only listed the amount of the drug gemcitabine in the bag, not the final concentration of the drug per millilitre of saline. The Baxter label listed both, she said.

The drug is a powder that must be mixed with saline before it's administered to a patient. Bags of saline usually contain a certain amount of "overfill" or more liquid than labelled to account for evaporation, the committee heard.

"It was not clear from the labelling on the Marchese bag if the overfill had been included in the determination of the final concentration," Freeman said.

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Pharmacy assistant in small hospital discovered diluted drugs by accident