A MEDICATION DATABASE - A TOOL FOR DETECTING DRUG-INTERACTIONS IN-HOSPITAL

Objective: Drug interactions may lead to life-threatening injuries. Mo re often, however, they lead to slow recovery, induce slight symptoms or result only in potential injury. Therefore, clinicians are not alwa ys aware of using potentially interacting drug combinations. An on-lin e alarming system of potential drug interactions was developed in Turk u University Central Hospital. In the present study, we utilised the s ystem to find out the incidence and nature of potential drug interacti ons occurring in a representative hospital patient population. Methods : Computerised anatomical therapeutic chemical (ATC)-coded patient med ication data of 2547 patients, treated in two internal medicine wards, were combined with an ATC-coded rule base of drug interactions. All p otential drug interactions in the study population were searched for. Results: A total of 326 potentially serious drug interactions were det ected in the study population. The number of patients in this group wa s 173, i.e. 6.8% of all patients had one or several drug combinations which might have led to serious clinical consequences. Concomitant use of calcium and fluoroquinolones (decreased absorption) was the most c ommon mistake (66 prescriptions). Conclusions: Potentially inappropria te drug combinations seem to occur frequently. Structured and coded me dication data can be utilised efficiently to detect potential drug int eractions in hospital. Computerised online monitoring and automatic al arming of potentially hazardous drug combinations might help clinician s to prescribe more safely, but further development of the system is n eeded to avoid unnecessary alarms.