MedScape - Douglas S. Paauw - June 30, 2016
"Drug/Drug Interactions
In the polypharmacy era, it is not unusual for patients with chronic disease to be taking a half-dozen or more different drugs. Drug interactions have increased because we are using more drugs, and more combinations of drugs, than ever before. Drug/drug interactions can impair the effectiveness of one or more drugs, or result in other adverse events.
Drug/drug interactions are considered preventable errors. With the advent of electronic prescribing, the hope was that software would warn prescribers about interactions between one or more drugs that the patient is taking, and these alerts are common. They are so ubiquitous, in fact, that alerts are often overridden in the prescribing process. Clinicians cannot rely on prescribing software to prevent all drug-drug interactions.
Douglas S. Paauw, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, provides examples of common drug/drug interactions and methods of prevention. The following examples are not ranked in any order of frequency or clinical significance."