Detection of hazardous drug/drug interactions in a community pharmacy and subsequent intervention

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Abstract
The interaction data in the British National Formulary were used to create a program which automatically recorded all potentially harmful drug/drug interactions from patient medication records. The program was used in a project pharmacy for 29 months to detect and record major drug/drug interactions. Analysis of the data from approximately 58,000 prescriptions showed that one in every 80 was written for a drug which interacted with a previously prescribed drug and might have caused a major harmful event. Many of the apparent interactions referred to previously prescribed drugs which were not currently part of the patient's drug regimen. Elimination of non-concurrent pairs still left one potentially hazardous prescription in every 180. Examination of these potential problems and consultation with both prescribers and patients indicated that few changes of prescriptions were required.