Drug interactions and adverse drug effects are responsible for the hospitalization and extended hospitalization of more than 100,000 Americans annually, not to mention a significant number of deaths. In Handbook of Drug Interactions: A Clinical and Forensic Guide, leading drug experts from pharmacology, toxicology, medicine, nutrition, and law have compiled a concise record of the known interactions of the most commonly prescribed drugs, as well as their interaction with nonprescription compounds. The agents covered include CNS drugs, cardiovascular drugs, antibiotics, and NSAIDs. The authors review the pharmacology, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, chemistry, metabolism, epidemiological occurrences, adverse reactions, and significant interactions for each class of drugs. Where necessary, they also consider forensic factors and implications for criminal law, malpractice, and tort litigation. Environmental and social pharmacological issues are also addressed in chapters on food and alcohol drug interactions, nicotine and tobacco, and anabolic doping agents. Individual chapters are devoted to drug interaction litigation and the role of psychotropic medications in crime. A detailed index provides rapid access to the book's extensive information on potential interactions.
Comprehensive and thorough, Handbook of Drug Interactions: A Clinical and Forensic Guide provides physicians with all the information needed to avoid prescribing drugs with undesirable interactions, and those active in clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine with all the data necessary to interpret possible interactions between drugs found simultaneously in patient samples.