Interações Medicamentosas Potenciais em Farmácia Comunitária – Estudo Exploratório

Potential Drug Interactions in Community Pharmacy – An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Potential drug interactions (PDIs) take place when two drugs known to interact are prescribed concurrently, regardless of any adverse reaction occur. PDIs necessarily precede drug interactions (DI’s) and are much more prevalent, representing a growing risk to the health of the world population and one of the most important preventable causes of morbidity and mortality. Thus, the main objective of this study is the analysis and classification of PDIs identified in community pharmacy. For this, data referring to medical prescriptions of patients were collected for 4 months, through an online form, being collected 284 prescriptions during this time. Out of the prescriptions collected with more than one prescribed drug, 132 presented at least one PDI, corresponding to 47.5% of the total sample. The number of PDIs described in the sample is 288, more than half of which are defined as major and only 1.4% as minor. The most prevalent therapeutic classes of drugs involved in PDIs were antihypertensives, followed by antidepressants and oral antidiabetics and, in turn, the drug most often present in PDIs was shown to be acetylsalicylic acid. Thus, despite the benefits associated with the prescription of multiple drugs to treat or control diseases, and increase the quality of life of patients, it is emphasized that the prescription must be balanced with the risks it entails. So, the prevalence of PDIs was shown to be high, being present in about 50% of prescriptions, with major interactions being the most prevalent. It is expected that this work will provide future investigations, either from the point of view of analyzing PDIs and DIs and their impact on the therapeutic success of patients, or the design of possible strategies to minimize the prevalence of these interactions.