Study of Drug Interactions and Associated Factors in Prescriptions of General Practitioners in Ardabil City, 2013-2014

Background: Drug interactions are made very serious problems for thousands of people every year. In most cases, doctors and pharmacists have not spent enough time for careful monitoring of patients in terms of drug interactions harmful effects. Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency of drug interactions and associated factors in prescriptions of general practitioners in Ardabil city. Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study has been done on 1000 prescriptions in Ardabil city which randomly selected from all prescriptions. Necessary information such as sex, the number of prescription items, the degree of doctor, and place of practice completed by a checklist. For obtain drug interactions, we used drug interaction facts and for analysis data we used SPSS 19. Results: Overall incidence of drug interaction was 19.7% from that 9.13% was severe, 37.1% was moderate and the rest had minor interactions. Drug interactions in specialties were more than general doctors. Prescriptions of male physicians had a significant increase in drug interactions. Increase in mean number of drugs in each prescription caused to a significant increase in the incidence of drug interactions. Conclusions: Knowledge of drug interactions and replace them with other drugs and decreasing the number of drugs we can reduce significantly these interactions