A Prospective Study of Drug-Drug Interactions in Emergency Medicine Department in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Drug-Drug Interactions(DDI) are common in emergency medicine department as patients are  more likely to receive multiple medications  simultaneously. In critically ill patients multiple drugs favour the occurrence of   DDI with its incidence ranging from 3-30%.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             DDIs can range from being insignificant to potentially lethal effects. It accounts for 40% of patients visiting emergency department inform of severe adverse drug reactions due to drug interactions.DDIs are associated with significant morbidity, mortality, affect quality of life of patient and can also be primary reason for hospital admission.It can lead to a variety of adverse events, toxic events, loss of efficacy of co-administered drugs.

Thus, recognizing and preventing the DDI is important to avoid the adverse outcomes and enhance patient safety. In spite of DDI commonly observed in Emergency Department, the data on monitoring and evaluation of DDI is sparse. Hence the present prospective observational study of drug-drug interactions in emergency medicine department in a tertiary care teaching hospital is done to generate some valid and useful data.