Background: As the medicine advanced, drug therapy became one of the most important and effective therapies in health care system. Which also raises the possibility of its mortality and morbidity. Drug-drug interaction (DDI) is defined as the occurrence of a harmful combination of prescribed drugs in a given patient. DDIs is a known cause of hospital visits, admissions and increases in health care use that could be prevented. In this study, we aimed to detect the DDIs prevalence in pediatric patients in King Abdulaziz university hospital(KAUH), Saudi Arabia.
Methodology: Retrospective cross-sectional study on a sample taken from all pediatric patients at KAUH in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia between January ā December 2106, with no exclusion criteria. We extracted the data from KAUH medical files. DDIs, severity and documentation of the DDIs were identified using micromedex. Data entry using microsoft office 2016. Data analysis using SPSS 21 and multivariate regression was done to assess the association of DDI with other factors.
Results: Three hundred and fifty-nine patients were selected with the mean age (SD) 7.06 (5.9), 202 (56.2%) were male. A total of 233 DDIs were identified in 64 (17.8%) of the patients with the mean (SD) 3.64 (3.52). Of all identified DDIs, the severity classification was: major [123 (52.79%)], moderate [67 (28.76%)], minor [37 (15.88%)] and contraindicated [6 (2.58%)]. The documentation of DDIs was excellent [9 (3.8%)], good [89 (38.2%)] and fair [135 (58%)]. Significant association with medications number 5 or more had been suggested. Conclusion: The prevalence of DDIs although much less than other studies but the higher proportion of major severity. Patients 1-3 years of age and those on 5 or more medications need more strict monitoring as they have more risk to have DDIs.