Heruitgifte van dure orale oncolytica

The increasing use of expensive oral anticancer medicines (OAM) comes with the downside of a financial and environmental burden, partially caused by unused medication. Current initiatives to reduce medication waste face challenges and legal barriers like the EU Falsified Medicines Directive. We propose an easy to implement, practical method which provides guaranteed quality of redispensed OAM. Returned OAM are assessed by the pharmacy on the basis of standardized quality criteria covering suitability, physical condition, authentication and additional aspects. Implementation of this approach in our institute resulted in 79% of returned OAM eligibility for redispensing, saving €483,301 and 1.1 kg of highly potent pharmaceutical waste over a 1 year period. We therefore advocate for removing any legal barriers for redispensing and broad adoption of this method to reduce unnecessary financial and medication waste while maintaining quality for our patients.

Conflict of interest and financial support: none declared.