Drug interactions in liver transplant patients

Objective: To assess the prevalence of clinically relevant drug-drug interactions and the factors associated with such interactions in liver transplant patients at a tertiary hospital. Method: A single-centre cross-sectional descriptive study of liver transplant patients admitted to the Digestive Surgery Unit (DSU) in 2011. The analysed variables were: sex, age, number of prescribed drugs at admission and number of days of hospitalisation. Results: The number of transplanted patients was 51, 44 of whom were included. The overall number of detected drug-drug interactions was 210, of which 153 (72.9%) were clinically relevant, representing a prevalence of 84.1% of patients. The number of prescribed drugs was directly proportional to the number of clinically relevant drug-drug interactions detected. There was no relationship between the number of interactions and either age or the number of days of hospitalisation. Conclusion: Liver transplant patients are critically ill patients with a high level of therapeutic complexity, among whom a high prevalence of clinically relevant interactions related to polypharmacy and the use of high-risk medications was detected