A Study on the Prevalence and Severity of Possible Drug-Drug Interactions in Pediatrics Department at an Indian Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Objective: To study the prevalence and severity of possible drug-drug interactions in the department of pediatrics. Methods:Case records of the in-patients of the pediatrics department from the medical records department were included and the records of the ambulatory patients were excluded from the study. All the collected cases were subjected to check for the drug-drug interactions by using the software micromedex 2.0 and the interactions were categorized based on the severity into minor, moderate and major.Results: A total of 142 cases were screened for possible drug-drug interactions (DDIs) and among them 76 cases were observed to be with possible DDIs. The prevalence was found to be 53.5% in this study. Majority of the cases with possible DDIs were observed to be in females. Results of the age wise categorization revealed that majority of the possible DDIS were observed in children (2-12 y) followed by the infants (1 mo-2 y). The drug combinations amikacin+ampicillin, paracetamol+phenytoin and ofloxacin+ondansetron were found to be the frequently observed possible DDIs of minor, moderate and major severities respectively. Conclusion:Majority of the possible DDIs were of moderate severity followed by major. Clinical pharmacists should take the responsibility in assisting the pediatricians for screening the possible DDIs in the prescriptions there by preventing them and providing a better pharmaceutical care for the pediatric population.

Pharmacological interactions among Paediatrics in Tertiary Care Hospital

“…and Ismail et al [14] . Male patients were found in majority in our study, which was similar to the results of several previous studies [1,6,10,14,17,18] . Most of the paediatric patients were found without chronic illness.…”

“…As per Micromedex, the level of severity, degree of documentation, onset of action, type and description of mechanism and clinical management of drugdrug interactions were noted. Half of the drug-drug interactions were found to be moderately severe which was similar in numerous past studies [1,7,8,10,[14][15][16][17] . Majority of the drug-drug interactions were fairly documented and also the onset of action of half of the drug-drug interactions was established to be not specified as per Micromedex.…”

“…Majority of the paediatric patients were found with only one drug-drug interaction per patient which was comparable to various previous studies [6][7][8]14,15] . The prevalence of drug-drug interaction was found to be 33.93 % which was greater in several prior studies and lower in several other prior studies [8,10,[14][15][16][17][18][19] . The most common drug class involved in drug-drug interactions was found to be antibiotics followed by supplements/vitamins which was comparable to the outcome established by Nawaz et al [15] .…”

“…In the present study, the paediatric patients were divided into a range of age groups from birth to 18 y of neonates (from birth to 28 d), infants (1 mo-1 y), children (1-12) y and adolescent (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) y where maximum number of paediatric patients were found in the age group of children (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12) y. This trend was different from the results found in several previous studies [1,6,8,10,14,15] but in a study conducted by Ahmed et al [16] the results were found similar.…”

“…Paediatrics are defined as those younger than 19 y. Newborn infants born before 37 w of gestational age are termed premature; those from birth to 28 d of age are neonates; 1 mo-1 y are infants; those above (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12) y are children and (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) y are adolescents. These differences among various paediatric age groups have led to complex and error prone medication use process [1][2][3][4][5] .…”