ASHP guide: Drug treatments for emergency cardiovascular care

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) published a new guide about cardiovascular care meant to help pharmacists and other healthcare providers save lives in emergency settings.

The pocket book, Emergency Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy: A Point-of-Care Guide, provides up-to-date information on drugs relating to emergency cardiovascular care, diagrams illustrating code situations, and treatment algorithms for arrhythmias and other conditions requiring emergency cardiovascular care.

“There are not really any concise guidelines that are out there. This is a day-to-day guide for practitioners, pharmacy residents, and others to find quick, up-to-date reference information,” said Cynthia A. Sanoski, BS, PharmD, chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice, Jefferson School of Pharmacy, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pa. Sanoski co-wrote the guide with Barbara S. Wiggins, PharmD, BCPS, a clinical pharmacy specialist in cardiology at the Medical University of South Carolina.

The guide includes several chapters focused solely on drugs used in emergency cardiovascular situations. “If the clinician or pharmacist is in the middle of a code situation and they are asked to use a certain drug, they can whip this open … rather than poring through all the drug information,” Sanoski said.

The authors review each drug used in emergency situations and discuss its mechanism, its role in therapy, route of administration, and side effects. “This is outside the standard information. There is important information you would want to convey to the readership that we have gained in clinical experience,” Sanoski said.

To order the Emergency Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy guide, call ASHP at 866-279-0681, email custserv@ashp.org, or visit its website.