Potential Drug-Drug Interactions in Medical Intensive Care Patients from a Brazilian Teaching Hospital

The occurrence of drug-drug interactions (DDIs) during pharmacotherapy has been a subject of great interest from the health community and individuals from-intensive care units (ICUs) are at-higher risk to develop ADRs among patients subjected to potential DDIs. Therefore, this article aimed to describe potential DDIs in medical intensive care patients from a Brazilian teaching hospital. The research consisted of a six-month, descriptive, prospective and cross-sectional study and Micromedex interaction database was employed to identify DDIs. In total, 108 patients were evaluated and 537 DDIs were identified during the study. Metamizole was the most prescribed drug and (93%) and phenytoin was the most involved DDIs (21.2%). Almost half of DDIs were considered major or contraindicated (42.9%) and polypharmacy together with prescription of drug inhibitors were factors associated to the presence of them. The occurrence of harmful DM was considerable and measures to avoid adverse drug reactions originated from them are highly needed.