Less is more: Two automated interventions to increase vitamin B12 measurement when long-term proton pump inhibitor and decrease redundant testing.

What Was Tested

This observational study looks at Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

The Laboratory Information System (LIS) automatically registered s-vitamin B12 when not ordered by General Practitioners to all requests patients with long term (>3years) PPI treatment, and with no s-vitamin B12 testing in the previous year.

Through the second intervention, the LIS reported the previous s-vitamin B12 result through an explanatory comment in the report, when the test had been requested in the previous three months.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers calculated the new diagnoses of vitamin deficiency (s-vitamin B12 < 200 pg/mL), examined the number of tests needed to detect a new case and investigated the economic cost of each one identified by the intervention.

Additionally, the researchers counted the s-vitamin B12 that were requested but not measured, and calculated the savings in reagent.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Automation, Clinical Laboratory Information Systems, Cross-Sectional Studies, Proton Pump Inhibitors, Vitamin B 12 and Vitamin B 12 Deficiency.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Appropriateness, Demand management, Overuse, Underuse and Vitamin B(12).

What This Means in Plain Language

This is an observational study of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12).

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2020 (Clinica chimica acta; international journal of clinical chemistry), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) compound page, all human trials.