Evaluation of drug information resources for interactions between therapeutic drugs and drugs of abuse.

OBJECTIVE

The study evaluated point-of-care resources for scope, completeness, and consistency of information describing interactions between therapeutic drugs and drugs of abuse (DoA).

METHODS

A cross-sectional evaluation study was conducted focusing on seven resources: Clinical Pharmacology, Facts & Comparisons eAnswers, Lexicomp Online, Micromedex, and A sample of clinically relevant interactions was developed through review of tertiary literature and resources, and input was solicited from subject matter experts. Entries from each resource for each interaction were evaluated for scope (i.e., whether there was an entry for the interaction); completeness (i.e., whether there was information addressing mechanism; clinical effects, severity, course of action, and level of certainty, described as a median rating on a 5-point scale); and consistency (i.e., whether the information in the resource was similar to the majority) among resources with an entry.

RESULTS

Following review by subject matter experts, the final sample contained 159 interactions. Scope scores ranged from 0.6% () to 43.4% (Lexicomp Online). Completeness scores ranged from 2 (interquartile range [IQR] 0 to 3, ) to 5 (IQR 5 to 5, Micromedex, Facts & Comparisons eAnswers). Consistency scores ranged from 30.8% () to 87.1% (Clinical Pharmacology) for severity and from 15.4% (Facts & Comparisons eAnswers) to 71.4% () for course of action.

CONCLUSIONS

Although coverage of drug-DoA interactions was low and content was often inconsistent among resources, the provided information was generally complete.