Assessment of the latest prescribed drug-related problems

OBJECTIVE: Drug-related problems (DRPs) could affect patient care and lead to deleterious manifestations, therefore, this investigation aimed to review the recently published studies concerning DRPs to improve their availability to clinical pharmacists, hoping that this information will be supportive and relevant to their practice settings. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A search of Elsevier, Sage, Springer/Nature, and Wiley online libraries on Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) was limited to the cumulative period from 1/1/2015 to 20/10/2020. The abstracts of 156 articles were critically reviewed and 50 articles were included based on relevance while excluding books. The selected articles reported DRPs and different strategies to reduce them. Moreover, drug-drug interactions (DDIs) in various patient populations were confirmed by many articles. Additionally, potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) predisposing factors were reported by others. RESULTS: 24 articles (48%) illustrated DDIs, 5 articles (10%) demonstrated ADRs, 4 articles (8%) showed medication errors (MEs), and 25 articles (50%) revealed efforts to reduce DRPs. The psychiatric population is at the utmost risk of pDDIs. Polypharmacy was the furthest recurrently reported risk factor related to DDIs. Adverse drug events (ADEs) increased healthcare costs. Different strategies to avoid DRPs were published through the stated period. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings can be supportive to healthcare professionals in enhancing their patients' quality of care by reducing the exposure to ADEs.