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Showing posts from May 14, 2018

PATIENTS AND THERAPEUTIC DRUG MONITORING

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Written by Timothy Okooboh There are drugs that should not be prescribed without regularly monitoring the patient or drug concentration in the plasma or serum. In this era of pharmaceutical care, these are medications a pharmacist should dispense after ensuring that the patient is under regular monitoring at the health facility the drug was prescribed. Some drugs have narrow therapeutic index, meaning that small differences in dosage or blood concentration may lead to treatment failure or adverse drug reactions. Some drugs without  a narrow therapeutic index are even potentially toxic hence, patients on these drugs need to be monitored through out therapy. Some patients may already have liver or kidney problems before starting a medication. These patients belong to a high risk group and need to be monitored while on some medications because most drugs are metabolized and cleared by the liver or kidneys and for patients who already have problems with these organs, drug to