Eurasian Jornol of Toxicolgy. , cilt.2, sa.3, ss.53-56, 2020 (Hakemli Dergi)
Objectives: Drug-drug interactions may occur when more than one drug is taken by the same patient. These interactions can result in increasing, decreasing
or preventing the effectiveness of drugs. In this study, prescriptions given by branch and emergency physicians were examined in terms of possible
drug interactions.
Materials and Methods: Patients over 65 years of age who received a prescription from both the emergency department and the internal medicine or
cardiology outpatient clinic were screened over a period of six months from July to December 2019. For the selected patients, information on the name
and number of drugs prescribed, age, and gender were recorded. Then, the interactions between the drugs included in the prescriptions were investigated
using Drug Interaction Checker-Medscape software.
Results: The study included 93 patients (57% females), with a mean age of 73.5 years. A total of eleven serious interactions, with the highest number belonging
to the interaction of aspirin-ramipril were observed in the prescriptions given by branch physicians. Comparing the prescriptions of the branch and emergency
physicians, 33 serious interactions, mostly that of ibuprofen-aspirin, were detected. Among the prescriptions of branch physicians, the majority of interactions
were observed between aspirin and B blockers. For the emergency physicians, the highest number of interactions were seen in NSAID-NSAIDs. In the comparison
of the prescriptions of the branch and emergency physicians, the highest number of interactions was 28, observed between NSAID and beta-blockers.
Conclusion: Emergency physicians should take a detailed history of elderly patients, especially concerning their regularly renewed prescriptions when
prescribing NSAID-group drugs.