Potential drug–drug Interactions in hospitalized cancer patients: A report from the Middle-East

Abstract

Introduction Patients suffering from solid tumors use a wide range of cytotoxic drugs. In this study, we aimed to detect, document, and descriptively analyze the potential drug–drug interactions in hospitalized solid tumor’s patients in a Middle Eastern referral oncology–hematology University-affiliated hospital. Materials and methods In this cross-sectional study, the medical record of solid tumor’s patients who were admitted to the referral oncological center in Isfahan, Iran, during the six months period (2018) were considered. We included all patients who had received at least two chemotherapy or nonchemotherapy drugs simultaneously. The potential drug–drug interactions between chemotherapy and nonchemotherapy drugs were evaluated with Lexi-Interact ver.1.1 online software. Results During the study period, a total of 141 cancer patients were recruited, and their drug therapy regiment was thoroughly analyzed. We detected 227 drug–drug interactions with moderate or major severity out of included patients in which 96, 71, 32, and 28 interactions were in the category of C, D, B, and X, respectively. One hundred and fourteen patients (80.8%) encountered at least one potential drug–drug interactions during their hospitalization. Mechanistically, most of drug–drug interactions (56.4%) were pharmacodynamics. Interaction between granisetron and metoclopramide were the top 10 detected interaction (11.4%). The interaction between docetaxel and carboplatin was the most frequent drug–drug interactions between oncology drugs (2.6% of total drug–drug interactions). Conclusion Potentially moderate or major drug–drug interactions frequently occur among solid tumor’s cancer patients necessitate the establishment of a clinical pharmacy service for providing relevant pharmacotherapy consultations to prevent this potentially serious concern.