Welcome to the Emergency Medicine Cases podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anton Hellman, bringing you Canada's brightest minds in emergency medicine from EMC studios in Toronto.

EM cases is part of SREMI, Schwartz-Risman Emergency Medicine Institute, the nonprofit organization dedicated to improving EM care through research and education.

The opinions expressed on this podcast are intended for information and education purposes only and should not be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition,

nor should they be used as a substitute for medical advice and qualified practice and physician.

So here's some facts to consider.

30% of ED patients have at least one drug-related problem contributing to their ED visit,

which includes ad adverse drug reactions

and sub-therapeutic dosing. More than one in nine ED visits are due to drug-related

adverse events. And many of these drug-related adverse events are due to drug interactions,

which are almost entirely preventable. I don't know about you, but besides the obvious ones,

I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to drug interactions over my 20-plus year EM career

and didn't realize how much they actually contributed to morbidity in our patients.

Presentations like syncope and near-sympathy, delirium, falls, and altered L.O.A. are often triggered

or directly caused by drug interactions, and these drug interactions are often overlooked.

We need to recognize drug interactions as a cause of these presentations, and we need to avoid

prescribing drugs that interact with other drugs that cause badness. In this one or two-part podcast series,

we'll see how deep we go into all of these things, we'll delve into some common presentations

that require having drug interactions in the differential diagnosis, which combinations of

drugs to avoid when ordering in the ED and when prescribing for outpatient

therapy from the ED. And to help us sort through the mountain of drug interactions, we have

none other than my friend and colleague, who we all know and love Dr. Walter Himmel. Welcome

back, Dr. Himmel. Thanks so much, and I'm really thrilled to be here. I love this topic.

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