The role of vitamin D in calcium homeostasis has been appreciated since 1921. However, the interest in vitamin D has been on the increase recently after the association of vitamin D with non-skeletal diseases as well and its potential role in the prevention of auto-immune disease, cancer, mental health problems and cardiovascular disease.
Despite the conduction of numerous researches around vitamin D and vitamin D deficiency, however there’s an absence of studies directly focusing on vitamin D deficiency treatment issues.

Care through Pharmaceutical

A pharmaceutical care issue (PCI) is defined as an element of a pharmaceutical need which requires to be assessed by a pharmacist. First, in depth management of vitamin D deficiency is explored; aims of therapy, guidelines, principles and evidence-based recommendations, monitoring and target level, pain management, treatment in pregnancy, special cases requiring very high doses, prevention of recurrence and supplementation.

Role of Pharmaceutical Care in Vitamin D

A reflection is made on the treatment issues that would occur following Helper and Strand categorization of 12 pharmaceutical care issues; untreated indication, improper medicine selection, inadequate dose, overdose, failure to receive treatment, adverse drug reaction, interactions, medicine use without indication, duplication of therapy, monitoring need, counselling need, and seamless care need. For each PCI category to be defined, certain questions are raised related to vitamin D deficiency.
These were used to design suitable criteria and questions to accurately formulate a data collection tool (DCT) capable of investigating treatment issues that can be related to vitamin D deficiency treatment. This DCT was validated and later used locally in a quantitative study to explore the treatment issues of patients diagnosed with vitamin d deficiency in a primary care clinic in Abu Dhabi. This study had very important findings supporting that applying pharmaceutical care is expected to achieve cost effective results in the treatment of vitamin D deficiency and improve the quality of life of the patients. Many recommendations are given to promote effective therapy and minimize PCIs.
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6th International Vitamin D Conference in Abu Dhabi