Potential Drug-Drug Interactions in Prescriptions to Hypertensive Patients at Apotek Farmasi Airlangga Surabaya

Abstract

Hypertension defined as a systolic blood pressure greater that 130 mmHg or a diastolic blood pressure greater than 80 mmHg. Antihypertensive agents are frequently used in combination in order to reach the suggested blood pressure or the goal therapy. Concomitant usage of antihypertensive agents or with other medications leads to the increase of potential drug-drug
interactions (PDDIs) which could interfere the medication effectivity or harm the patients. This study was purposed to analyze the PDDIs in prescriptions written for hypertensive patients at Apotek Farmasi Airlangga Surabaya in December 2022. The PDDIs of 91 hypertensive patients’ prescriptions was analyzed using online Medscape drug interaction checker. The results showed
that 91 of 196 (46.4%) prescriptions analyzed had a total of 176 PDDIs. The vast majority of PDDIs recorded was between antihypertensive agents at 47.2% while 38.1% of the PDDIs occurred at the concomitant use of antihypertensive agents with other medication and the remaining 14.7% of PDDIs were the consequence of inter usage of other medications. Additionally, most of PDDIs occurred were pharmacodynamic reactions at 78.4% while based on its severity, most of PDDIs needed to be monitored closely at 82.6%. Amlodipine-bisoprolol was the most frequent potential drug interaction pair that found at 13.6% followed by candesartan-bisoprolol at 11.4%. Closely monitoring on blood pressure and potassium serum levels are essentials in order to preven the incident of PDDIs