Potential drug interactions in surgical patients

The incidence and frequency of potentially serious drug interactions were evaluated in hospitalized surgical patients. Drug profiles of patients on the general surgical service of a tertiary-care teaching hospital were retrospectively reviewed for two six-month periods to determine how often drugs that are known for major interactions were prescribed concurrently. Interactions were studied that were relatively well documented and potentially harmful to the patients. A total of 1825 patient profiles were reviewed (21,888 patient days). At least one potential drug interaction was found in 17% of the patients. Interactions were found to occur at the rate of 1 for every 59 patient days. Digoxin and cimetidine were the potential interacting drugs in almost 90% of the cases. Hospitalized surgical patients require close monitoring because they frequently receive potentially interacting drugs.