Potential Drug-Drug Interactions; A Study Among Patients of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a Tertiary Care Hospital of South Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Objective: To assess the prevalence of drug-drug interactions in medications prescribed to the admitted patients in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Bahawal Victoria Hospital (BVH), a tertiary care hospital of Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

Methodology: Present study was conducted by using retrospective cross-sectional study design. Medication data of 77 patients of any age group without gender discrimination admitted in ICU ward of BVH from January 2016 to March 2016 (three months) was collected and screened to identify drug-drug interactions. Drug interaction checker within www.drugs.com database and reference text book of “Drug Interaction Facts” were used as reference sources. Data was interpreted by using IBM SPSS version 20.0.

Results: During study period total 77 patients were admitted in the ICU ward comprised of, 53 females and 24 male patients. On averages 8.86 ± 2.42 drugs were prescribed in each prescription. About 92.2% prescriptions showed at least one drug-drug interaction. Moderate drug-drug interactions were more prevalent with score of 448 (75.04%) as compared to minor 114 (19.1%) and major 35 (5.86%) drug-drug interactions.

Conclusion: Detection of potential drug-drug interactions reveals the poor prescribing pattern and highlights the need of effective and regular screening for such interactions to improve the patient care.