The Current and Potential Role of Pediatric Clinical Pharmacologists in Italy: A Review with Evidence Synthesis and Literature Analysis

Background: Considering infants and young children, it is well established that their physiological and developmental peculiarities should not be confused with those of other patient categories, such as adults or vulnerable patients. Indeed, their anatomic- functional characteristics specifically influence the drug pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic profile. Therefore, the availability of specialists devoted to pediatric pharmacology within multidisciplinary teams is highly desirable to improve the care of these patients. Objective: This work aims to describe the role of pediatric clinical pharmacologists in the context of pediatric clinical care in Italy, using a qualitative method based on the type of articles published. Methods: A literature review was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines, considering articles published on the PubMed database between January 2017 and March 2022 and using specific MeSH terms. The papers were attributed to two blind assessors and then processed for discussion. To support article screening, focusing on the words contained in article titles, the R package evidence synthesis tool revtools was used. Results: The search identified a total of 1544 articles, of which 93 were selected. The articles analyzed mainly concern therapeutic drug monitoring and pharmacovigilance with adverse drug reactions. Conclusion: An insight into multidisciplinary work to prevent, diagnose, and treat pediatric diseases and to monitor treatments is provided in this study. However, this concept needs to be strengthened in the long term.