A Pharmacoepidemiological Approach to Evaluate Drug-Drug Interactions in a Specialized Stroke Unit in Pakistan

Stroke is one of the common diseases responsible for morbidity and mortality worldwide, despite advancements in its treatment and management through drug therapy or surgical intervention. Drug interactions in stroke patients present a unique challenge as the patient's critical condition makes concomitant drug administration risky. The aim was to determine the prevalence of potential drug-drug interactions, and to identify clinically significant drug-drug interactions. The cross sectional one-year study was carried out in a stroke unit of a tertiary care hospital. Patient medication charts were evaluated for potential drug-drug interactions using Micromedex DrugReax. Statistical analysis was carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows. A 70.8% prevalence of potential drug-drug interactions was observed in the patients of stroke unit. Clinically significant interactions were present in 58.2% patients which was attributed to 58 drug pairs. A significant association was present between number of interactions and number of prescribed drugs and age.