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Polypharmacy and Drug Interaction

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Treatment of Chronic Pain by Medical Approaches

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Abstract

In days past, a basic understanding of a drug’s mechanism of action was sufficient for the purpose of prescribing a medication to treat the vast majority of patients and their conditions. Those days are long gone with 48 % of Medicare beneficiaries over the age of 65 having three or more chronic medical conditions and 21 % having five or more of these conditions (Boyd et al., JAMA. 294(6):716–24, 2005). It has been estimated that the likelihood of a drug interaction in a patient taking only two different medications is only 6 %, whereas when the number of medications increases to ten, the likelihood of drug interaction increases to 100 % (Lin, Can Alzheimer Dis Rev. 10–4, 2003). With this virtual certainty of frequently dealing with drug interaction, a physician must have a solid understanding of polypharmacy along with drug interactions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology, Pennsylvania State University Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, 500 University Drive, 850, Hershey, PA, 17033, USA

    Christopher A. Steel M.D. & Jill Eckert DO

  2. Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA

    Jill Eckert DO

Authors
  1. Christopher A. Steel M.D.
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  2. Jill Eckert DO
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Correspondence to Christopher A. Steel M.D. .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. President and CEO, Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, The Center for Pain Relief, West Virginia University School of Medicine, Charleston, West Virginia, USA

    Timothy R. Deer

  2. Clinic Chief, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesiology, Stanford Pain Medicine Center, Redwood City, CA, USA, and Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA

    Michael S. Leong

  3. Department of Anesthesiology, Pennsylvania State University, College of Medicine, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA

    Vitaly Gordin

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© 2015 American Academy of Pain Medicine

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Steel, C.A., Eckert, J. (2015). Polypharmacy and Drug Interaction. In: Deer, T., Leong, M., Gordin, V. (eds) Treatment of Chronic Pain by Medical Approaches. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1818-8_17

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