Drug-nutrient interaction in prescriptions for enteral feeding at the intensive care unit of a general hospital

Patients undergo nutritional therapy so as to prevent malnutrition or worsening of the condition. When they are unable to receive oral nutrition, the most common form of physiological and nutritional therapy is through enteral nutrition (EN). The drug-nutrient interaction is described as occurring changes in the kinetics or dynamics of the drug or nutrient administered. The purpose of this study is to describe drug-nutrient interactions in prescriptions required for enteral nutrition in patients at the Intensive Care Unit of a General Hospital of the Federal District. A descriptive-exploratory study was undertaken with data collected from January 2011 to December 2012 at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the North Wing Regional Hospital (Hospital Regional da Asa Norte – HRAN). The investigation for interactions in prescriptions was conducted using Micromedex ® software and Spearman correlation was used for the statistical analysis of variables. In the 101 prescriptions analyzed, 1190 drugs were found. The minimum amount of drugs found per patient was 7 and the maximum was 18, at an average of 12 drugs. Regarding enteral drug-nutrition interaction, the incidence was 15.94%, while drug-drug interaction occurred in 84.06% of all observed interactions. The most frequent interactions were moderate, in 44.57% of the incidences, followed by major interactions at 32.33%, and minor interactions at 13.16%, and lastly the contraindications in 9.93% of prescriptions analyzed. There was a high incidence of moderate degree drug interactions in patients under enteral nutrition therapy. Key words: Enteral nutrition, drug-drug interactions, drug-nutrient interaction.