Standards of Practice Committee

A call for submissions from the Standards of Practice Committee – TDM of Immunosuppressant Drugs

Following the IATDMCT meeting in Stuttgart, the Standards of Practice Committee, in collaboration with the Pharmacometrics Committee, is embarking on a project aimed at bringing together published evidence that describes current ‘best practice’ in TDM for various classes of drugs, and which will offer guidance to help ensure the quality and integrity of TDM practice. The objective is to make this resource available to members on the IATDMCT website as either a reference + link to the paper, or, ideally, as full text (subject to copyright). This resource will later be used to formulate consensus clinical practice guidelines.

The first drug group targeted will be the immunosuppressive drugs. In order to make this relevant and representative, we would like your help. We are asking for contributions in the form of articles that you feel describe the state-of-the-art in TDM of immunosuppressive drugs. The articles may describe any aspect related to pre-analytical, analytical, and/or post-analytical considerations, including interpretation and clinical application of results, but must include evidence that the factors discussed influence clinical practice/outcomes. Please use the following (flexible) guidelines (you do not have to provide the full text):

• The article should be:
    - concerned with the pre-analytical, analytical, and/or interpretative aspects of TDM of any of the currently used immunosuppressive drugs
    - peer reviewed and published
    - no more than 5 years old, i.e. 2007 or later
• Method reports in isolation are discouraged, unless there are implications for clinical practice/outcomes
• A few lines summarising the reason for submitting the article would be useful

This undertaking will work best if as many people as possible can get involved in submitting articles, and we do hope you can find a little time to contribute.

Correspondence should be forwarded to: Phillip Morgan, Vice Chair Standards of Practice Committee, c/o IDM Laboratory, Institute of Liver Studies, King’s College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London UK SE5 9RS. Email: phillip.morgan@nhs.net.

Proposed articles will be reviewed by a small expert panel of IATDMCT members, prior to listing. We will review the response at the end of November 2012.

Background/Purpose of the Committee

The SLP Committee was founded in 1997 at the IATDMCT Congress in Vancouver with the objective of developing guidelines for standards of best practice in TDM-CT. During the early years two comprehensive surveys were conducted by Dr Ester Zylber-Katz who was the founding chair of this committee. Subsequently, during his chairmanship of this committee, Professor Pierre Marquet analyzed the results of the surveys and published its findings in a report which was published in the committee pages of the IATDMCT website.

Starting from 2005, at every biannual congress workshops were conducted under the auspices of this committee. These workshops have been fully subscribed and proved to be very successful.

The main purpose of this committee is to:

• act as a forum for exchange of knowledge on issues related TDM and Clinical Toxicology laboratory practice;
• help in the setting of guidelines for laboratory practice, including the interpretation of clinical data emanating from a TDM-Clinical Toxicology laboratory.

Membership List