Assessment of potential drug-drug interactions in in-patients of a medicine ward of a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

Drug-Drug interactions are the common problems during the allopathic drug administration especially with polypharmacy, which may have one of reason for hospital admission and fatal consequences. The current study was carried out to assess the potentiality of drug-drug interactions, the risk associated with drug interactions and to identify the most commonly prescribed drugs which causing drug interactions. The prospective study was carried out between January 2014 to June 2014 for a period of six months in an internal medicine ward. Information on patient’s demographic details, medication history and relevant clinical laboratory data were obtained from each patient by interview and medical records. The potential DDIs were identified using Micromedex, Stockleys drug-drug interactions and Medscape. Total 150 patients were reviewed, out of 150 patients, 104(69.33%) patients had 227 PDDIs. Among 104 patients, 56(53.8%) were males (PDDIs (55.9%) were: 18 major, 101 moderate, 8 minor) and 48(46.15%) were females (PDDIs 44.05% were: 13 major, 74 moderate, 13 minor). The average numbers of drugs prescribed were 11, severe PDDIs were 19%, moderate DDIs were 69.6% and mild interactions were 11.4%. Among major therapeutic classes, Antibiotics (25.2%) were having high PDDIs and Anti-Diabetics (5.04%) were low PDDIs. A more number of drug-drug interactions were occurred in male (59) compared to females (45). There were a significant increased in PDDIs with the increased age and increased number of drugs prescribed to a patients. The study showed that regular monitoring of PDDIs will definitely helps in a better patient care