Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology 6 (2018) 742-751 doi: 10.17265/2328-2150/2018.08.004 Importance of the Pharmaceutical Council in the Dispensation of Laxants and Probiotics Pablo Lopez Veiga Juana Benedi González and Irene Iglesias Peinado Department of Pharmacology, Pharmacognosy ant Botanic pf Complutense, University of Madrid, Madrid 28040, Spain Abstract: The goal of pharmaceutical care is to improve the patient’s quality of life, and it must do so by maximising its effectiveness and reducing the risks of the treatment. Therapeutic protocols are an important tool for encouraging the correct use of drugs. The aims of this work are: to analyse the type of patients who visit the pharmacies in the study; to determine the importance of pharmaceutical advice in dispensing; and to identify the most commonly used strains of probiotics and laxatives. A transversal descriptive and observational study was conducted with 500 patients in five pharmacies. The population taking part in the study is predominantly female, aged over 61, of Spanish nationality, actively employed and with middle or higher educational studies. Over 90% of the patients followed the advice of the pharmacist over the advice of their doctors. The most widely used probiotics were Lactobacillus acidophillus and Saccharomyces boulardii for gastrointestinal protection and treatment of diarrhoea. The most commonly used laxatives are bulk-forming and contact laxatives. The pharmacist’s opinion is increasingly important in the treatment of pathologies that may be considered as minor. Therapeutic protocols are an aid to correct dispensing. Key words: Pharmaceutical care, protocols, laxatives, probiotics. 1. Introduction The increasing complexity of patients’ pharmacological treatment has led to a change in our way of understanding professional activity in pharmacies. Pharmaco-therapeutic monitoring, one aspect of the concept of pharmaceutical care, has transformed the pharmacist into an active and co-responsible agent for healthcare outcomes. Drug-related problems such as non-optimum doses, inappropriate prescriptions and low treatment follow-up increase morbidity and mortality rates due to the incorrect use of drugs, and have high costs for society. As many as 30% of hospital admissions are directly linked to drug-related problems (DRP), and the most frequent causes of these admissions are avoidable adverse episodes and low adherence to treatment[1-3]. Concern is also growing about the rise in the global spread of antimicrobial resistance, which represents an added public health problem [4]. Corresponding author: Pablo López Veiga, Ph. in pharmacy, research fields: pharmaceutical care. To avoid these problems as far as possible, patients require various healthcare professionals to take part in pharmacological monitoring and provide patients with adequate healthcare information. The doctor is responsible for the diagnosis in primary and specialised healthcare, while pharmacists must supervise the adherence and proper use of the treatments in conjunction with the doctor through pharmaceutical care [5-7]. In fact, in most European countries pharmacists are the only healthcare professionals who have the knowledge and the specific academic skill to provide this service [8]. The term “pharmaceutical care” was first coined by Brodie [9] in 1966 in relation to “drug-use control”. It was subsequently defined by Mikeal et al. [10] in 1975, and in 1980 Brodie et al. [11] added the concept of “treatment monitoring” to guarantee its efficiency and safety. The definition of Hepler and Strand is the most widely supported so far, and was in fact adopted by the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (ASHP) in 1992, who defined it as follows: “Pharmaceutical care is the direct, responsible D DAVID PUBLISHING