High Prevalence of Drug–Drug Interactions in Primary Health Care is Caused by Prescriptions from other Healthcare Units

Drug–drug interactions are increasingly common, as patients are getting older and the number of drugs per patient is increasing. In this study, we investigated to which extent potential drug–drug interactions originated from single or multiple prescribers. All patients attending any of 20 primary he...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology 2018-05, Vol.122 (5), p.512-516
Main Authors: Andersson, Marine L., Böttiger, Ylva, Kockum, Henrik, Eiermann, Birgit
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Drug interaction
Drug Interactions
Drug Prescriptions
Drug Utilization Review
Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions - diagnosis
Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions - epidemiology
Drugs
Female
Health care
Humans
Male
Medicin och hälsovetenskap
Middle Aged
Occupational health
Patients
Polypharmacy
Prescription Drugs - adverse effects
Prevalence
Primary Health Care
Retrospective Studies
Risk Factors
Sweden - epidemiology
Time Factors
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Summary:Drug–drug interactions are increasingly common, as patients are getting older and the number of drugs per patient is increasing. In this study, we investigated to which extent potential drug–drug interactions originated from single or multiple prescribers. All patients attending any of 20 primary healthcare centres were included in a retrospective observational cohort study. Data on all prescriptions to these patients, irrespectively of the prescriber, were collected for two 4‐month periods. Potential drug interactions were identified using the drug–drug interaction database SFINX. Interactions were classified with respect to the workplace of the prescriber, and the prevalence of interactions according to origin was analysed. We found that the drug interactions were significantly more common when the drugs were prescribed from different healthcare centres, compared with drugs prescribed from the patients’ primary healthcare centre only. One explanation for this increased risk of drug interactions could be that the prescribers at different primary healthcare centres do not share the same information concerning the total medication list of the patient.
ISSN:1742-7835
1742-7843
1742-7843
DOI:10.1111/bcpt.12939