Abstract
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the prevalence of potential drug-drug interactions in cancerous hospitalized patients at Bahawalpur Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Oncology (BINO), Pakistan. This cross sectional study was performed on 100 patients consecutively admitted to BINO during January to July 2013. The potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) were evaluated by using Lexi-Interact software. A total of 110 pDDIs were identified from 54 patients of sample population with moderate and major severity. The risk rating for 50.90% of pDDIs was "D". Most of DDIs were of pharmacokinetic mechanism (70.90%). The interaction of diclofenac with 5-fluorouracil was the most common DDIs (14.55%) among the anticancer agent and supportive agents whereas dexamethasone with diclofenac was most common drug-drug interaction (5.45%) among the supportive agents. Dexamethasone (17.27%), diclofenac (15.45%), and doxorubicin (13.64%) were the most commonly offending medication responsible for most of DDIs. Doxorubicin was the only anticancerous agent which interact the most with other drugs. A sound knowledge of pDDIs can greatly help in reducing incidence and treatment costs. Such patients should be carefully monitored in order to minimize adverse outcomes resulting from pDDIs. Therefore we recommend intensive monitoring of cancer patients in many pDDIs The Department of Clinical Pharmacy should be established in the hospital in order to minimize the adverse drug events and help in the surveillance of pDDIs. This database can be helpful in the evaluation of important clinical outcomes of important DDIs in the hospital settings.