Summary
Aim. To evaluate outpatient doctors (OD) experience in prescribing iron preparations (FeP) for the treatment of iron deficiency and anemia in Lithuania.
Methods. Cross-sectional study. A survey was used, which consisted of sociodemographic questions and questions about FeP administration and work experience. Chi-square test, ANOVA were used for statistical analysis. The difference in results was considered statistically significant when the resulting p-value was less than 0.05.
Results. 108 ODs participated (woman – 96 (88.89%), man – 12 (11.11%)), from five randomly selected cities. Respondents age – 55.0 ± 14.1 years. 42 (38.9%) doctors said that they don’t use guidelines while prescribing FeP, 66 (61.11%) doctors do. Of those who used it, 29 (43.93%) couldn’t specify which ones. Differences were found between the use of FeP guidelines and the reason of choosing form of FeP (respectively 5 (7.6%) vs 10 (23.8%); p = 0.019). Differences were found between the use of guidelines and tactics when dealing with FeP side effects experienced by patients (respectively 1 (1.5%) vs 5 (11.9%), p = 0.032). 54 (50%) doctors agreed that there is a lack of practical protocols for prescribing FeP. Older ODs (60–69 years old) agreed more that there is a need to develop apps for prescribing of FeP (p = 0.030), while younger (30–39 years old) ODs wanted more courses about that (p = 0.012).
Conclusions. Almost two out of five doctors didn’t use any FeP guidelines in their work. 50% of doctors agreed that they felt a lack of practical guidelines on prescribing FeP. 72.22% of doctors wanted that there would be created information about the prescription of FeP in the form of notebook with the main information.
