Alicante's Pedro Zapater Appointed as New President of the Spanish Society of Clinical Pharmacology

Dr. Pedro Zapater from Alicante has been appointed as the new president of the Spanish Society of Clinical Pharmacology. Zapater is the Head of the Clinical Pharmacology Section at the General University Hospital Dr. Balmis in Alicante and a Professor of Pharmacology at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche.

The scientific society states that the new president's proposal will be to enhance the role of clinical pharmacologists at various levels and stages of decision-making regarding medications, promote research, develop the teaching dimension inherent to the specialty, and improve collaboration between services.

“Undoubtedly, Clinical Pharmacology is key in enhancing decision-making and ensuring equity in access to treatments as it provides the tools to optimise the choice of the best drug for each patient according to their individual characteristics. This is achieved through clinical research and the development of new drugs, as well as the use of tools such as pharmacovigilance, pharmacokinetics-pharmacodynamics, pharmacogenetics, and pharmacogenomics, which help us choose the drug with the best benefit-risk ratio for a specific patient and allow us to adequately monitor the patient's response to treatment,” the Alicante native indicates.

The appointment of Dr. Zapater takes place within the framework of the renewal of the entity's Board of Directors, approved during its last General Assembly. Among the priorities of the new board is also to support and enhance the activities of the Society's Pharmacovigilance group, created by the Board of Directors chaired by Dr. Agustí, with the aim of integrating and enhancing all the assistance, research, and teaching activities in Pharmacovigilance that the different Clinical Pharmacology services in our country have been developing.

Dr. Zapater has identified the most immediate challenges as “improving medical prescription in an aging society, with a large number of chronic patients taking multiple medications simultaneously.” This reality, he emphasized, increases the risk of “drug interactions, adverse effects, and prescription cascades.”

He also stressed the need to strengthen pharmacovigilance, as “the reporting of adverse reactions by professionals and patients remains insufficient.” Improving communication in this area will allow for the “identification of drugs whose benefits do not outweigh their risks and the updating or withdrawal of their indications.”

The third challenge is related to the information patients receive: “Many inappropriate uses of medications are due to misinformation, especially in the era of unfiltered information overload on the internet.” Therefore, the SEFC will promote actions to improve therapeutic education and the active role of patients in their health.