چكيده لاتين :
Concomitant use of several drugs by ICU( Intensive Care Unit) patients is often
unavoidable. In these patients, pharmacokinetic drug interactions are very likely. The current
study was designed to evaluate these interactions in patients hospitalized in an ICU of a
teaching hospital in Tehran, Iran.
A questionnaire was designed and used to collect study data. The study was done in the
ICU of a teaching hospital affiliated to the Shaheed Beheshti Medical University. Overall
information extracted from 567 ICU prescriptions from March 2005 to December 2005.
The extent of occurrence and frequency of potential pharmacokinetic interactions were
categorized based on the reference text Drug Interactions Facts. All of the pharmacokinetic
drug interactions were extracted and evaluated in terms of mechanism, significance, severity,
documentation and onset.
There were 413 pharmacokinetic interactions in 567 studied prescriptions, which were
divided into 64 types of pharmacokinetic interactions. The most observed interaction was
between ciprofloxacin and sucralfate. Mechanisms of the pharmacokinetic interactions were
related to metabolism (%60.05), absorption (% 38.26), elimination (%0.97) and distribution
(%0.73). There was a direct relationship between the number of drugs per prescription and
the frequency ofpharmacokinetic interactions (p(LESS THAN)O.OOl, r =0.98)
Findings obtained in this study revealed that there is a significant number of rapid
occurring, moderate, probable and definite interactions among the ICU prescriptions. This
highlights the necessity for the presence of a drug specialist (i.e. clinical pharmacist) to
rationalize the therapy and minimize major interactions
