Cost Evaluation of Dried Blood Spot Home Sampling as Compared to Conventional Sampling for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring in Children
Martial et al.
The finding, in our words
Home DBS sampling for therapeutic drug monitoring in children cut total costs per draw by 43% for haemato-oncology patients and 61% for renal transplant patients from a societal perspective, with smaller savings from a healthcare-only viewpoint. The findings support decentralised diagnostics in paediatric care by quantifying the economic advantage of reducing hospital visits.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
A systematic review found mixed economic evidence for microsampling in therapeutic drug monitoring; one study reported no cost reduction with DBS home-sampling, €688 versus €676, whilst another predicted savings up to 61%. The authors caution that more work is required to assess costs alongside clinical outcomes and optimise logistics for decentralised implementation.
Enhanced visual and textual guidance significantly improved the quality of dried blood spots self-collected by children and adolescents, increasing the proportion of acceptable cards from 47.6% to 86.6%, which supports the feasibility of home sampling for therapeutic drug monitoring.
VAMS microsampling found no significant difference from venous blood for tacrolimus in paediatric patients; samples were stable for 14 days, with average difference between paired at-home samples of 0.12 ± 0.94 ng/mL.
This review surveys published LC-MS/MS methods that use dried blood microsampling for therapeutic drug monitoring of immunosuppressants in transplantation, chemotherapy and autoimmune disease, finding that volumetric dried blood samples can replace conventional venous draws for home sampling and improve patient quality of life. The authors discuss pre-analytical considerations, clinical applicability, cost-effectiveness, harmonisation gaps and patient perception, concluding that obstacles to routine clinical implementation remain despite growing methodological maturity.
A review of dried blood microsampling for tyrosine kinase inhibitor monitoring, covering the analytical and clinical requirements for moving oral cancer-drug TDM out of hospital.