Medication Levels in Normal Range
Improved Patient Safety Through Medication Initiative
In order to help prevent the body from rejecting its new liver, the Liver Care Center team at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center prescribes immunosuppressant medications. These medications help "trick" the child's immune system into not attacking the new organ, which would normally be seen as a foreign substance. This "attack" on the new organ is called rejection. Rejection can be treated and does not always result in loss of the organ.
To help improve patient safety with immunosuppressant medications, Cincinnati Children's initiated a research study to investigate the way medication doses are adjusted and managed. As a result of this study, the Transplant Medication Safety team developed a standardized questionnaire and a statistical process to be used by all team members. This questionnaire helps determine whether or not a particular medication dose needs to be changed and / or adjusted.
Since this new customized approach to post-transplant care was implemented in 2002, immunosuppression levels taken on an outpatient basis have significantly improved:
Last updated January 2007
