Cancer drugs worth $465K discarded after P.E.I. hospital fridge malfunctions

A faulty pharmacy refrigerator at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown led staff to discard $465,000 worth of chemotherapy drugs out of an abundance of caution, Health P.E.I. says.  

Last November, staff at the QEH realized temperatures in the machine being used to store the cancer-treatment medications had been fluctuating up and down for more than five months.

That meant that at least some of the time, the drugs were being stored at temperatures above the pharmaceutical manufacturers' recommendations.

The recommended maximum temperature was 8 C, but temperatures inside the industrial cooling unit went as high as 15 C, hospital staff learned from the fridge's logs. 

Dr. Michael Gardam, chief executive officer of Health P.E.I., said the first priority of medical staff was finding out whether the safety or potency of the drugs given to patients would have suffered.

"We've gone back to the manufacturers to say: 'Do you have data that [says] these drugs are still usable?' And the answer is yes."

It took several months for Health P.E.I. to get the answers from all the drug companies with products in the fridge.