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Journal de Pharmacie Clinique

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Comparison of drug interaction data bases Volume 16, issue 1, Mars 1997

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Authors
Service de pharmacie, Hôpital central, CHU Nancy, 29, avenue du Maréchal-de-Lattre-de-Tassigny, CO n° 34, 54035 Nancy Cedex, France.

A comparative study of three drug interaction data banks was undertaken at the pharmacy, which assures a daily individual dispensation of drugs for a long-term care centre. The data banks tested were IAM-Vidal accessible on CD-Rom Europharm, Thériaque accessible on Minitel and CD-Rom Euromed, and Drug-Reax accessible on CD-Rom Micromedex. A detailed study carried out the 1995, January 11th, and concerning all the patients of this long-term care centre (80 patients, i.e. 80 individual prescriptions), showed that : the average number of drugs (number of lines) per patient was 5,6 with extremes of 1 to 13 ; the percentage of prescriptions presenting at least one drug interaction was 54 % for the IAM-Vidal and Thériaque data banks, whereas it was only 20 % for Drug-Reax ; the average number of drug interactions observed when nine drugs were prescribed was 6,33 for IAM-Vidal, 5,67 for Thériaque and 1,67 for Drug-Reax ; the IAM-Vidal and Thériaque data banks detected mainly the interactions classed as the least dangerous (65 % and 75 %, respectively, of interactions detected), whereas Drug-Reax detected mainly the interactions classed as moderate and major (85 % of interactions detected). A more extensive study carried out over a four-months period, compiling all the potential drug interactions over this period, made it possible to refine the comparison of these three data banks. The study showed the interactions that were not present during the one-day study. At the end of these two studies, the Thériaque data bank, accessible on CD-Rom Euromed, appears to be the best suited for a daily analysis of individual prescriptions at the long-term care centre.