Anti-Epileptic Therapeutic Drug Monitoring
The primary goal of AED therapeutic drug monitoring is the optimization of a patient’s clinical outcome by supporting management of the patient’s medication through measurement of drug concentration levels. Therapeutic drug monitoring has become very important in treatment with the AEDs since it can be quite difficult to identify a patient’s optimal dose on just the clinical basis. This is due to a number of reasons. Some of the reasons include:
The process of monitoring requires samples of blood from the patient and for the longest time, venipuncture has been the main technique used to obtain blood. However, this method has proven to be an invasive technique. Technological advancement has facilitated the invention of new techniques that are less invasive and allow drawing little amounts of blood compared to venipuncture.
One of these technologies is microsampling. It allows drawing very little amounts of blood (as little as 10 µL to 20 µL) which can be used for the therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). With the amount of blood needed for these tests from time to time, it is the safest method of obtaining blood from patients without having to put the patients’ health in jeopardy. Other than that remote patient monitoring with microsampling, is an easy and convenient method of blood sample collection and can be done even in remote areas where patients can draw blood on their own and send the sample to the lab for evaluation. With microsampling, TDM for AEDs is as easy as ABC.