Document Type : Case reports

Authors

• Lingti Kong ¹
• Yulin Zhu ¹
• Yong Zhang ²
• Haitao Liu ²

¹ Department of Pharmacy, The First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China

² Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China

Abstract

Introduction: Vancomycin damage to the kidney is one of the severe adverse reactions. The primary objective of this study was to discuss how the clinical pharmacists should deal with the results of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) for Vancomycin.
Case Presentation: A case of severe acute kidney injury in a 60-year-old woman receiving Vancomycin as empirical therapy is re- ported here. The patient was admitted to the respiratory intensive care unit (RICU) of the First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College, China, on 15 Oct 2015. On Day 7, the steady-state serum trough concentration and peak concentration of Vancomycin were 102.2 and 111.9 μg/mL, respectively. Clinical pharmacists immediately contacted the clinicians and advised them to discontinue Van- comycin therapy as soon as possible, and the proposal was adopted. On Day 8, serum creatinine (SCr) increased to 719 μmol/L, and creatinine clearance rate (CrCl) decreased to 6 mL/min; then, the patient was given dialysis treatment. After she underwent dialy- sis treatment, SCr decreased to 330 μmol/L and CrCl increased to 14 mL/min on Day 19; then, the patient was discharged after she accepted the doctor’s advice to start a home-dialysis program outside the hospital.
Conclusions: In this case, clinical pharmacists contacted the doctor to avoid further aggravated renal damage timely when they found a significant increase in Vancomycin concentrations. It indicates that the Vancomycin level can be used as an indirect marker of renal function as increased Vancomycin level results from and contributes to acute kidney injury.

Keywords

• Acute Kidney Injury
• Drug Monitoring
• Vancomycin