[Incompatibilities in intravenous therapy: What can be done to prevent them?].

In hospitals, the administration of drugs intravenous is very common and essential in cases where there is a need for rapid onset of pharmacological effect or another administration route cannot be used. The intravenous route may entail risks, such as the incompatibility between the drugs administered. Incompatibility is any unwanted physicochemical reaction that occurs when two or more drugs are mixed and where the resulting product can affect the efficacy and safety of therapy.

[Adverse drug reactions. Detection].

Adverse reactions to medications create an important health problem and a nursing professional must assume his/her role in detecting them early on, in identifying them, in educating the public about them, in treating them, and finally in serving notice of them. In order to ease the identification of adverse effects which patients may present, the authors provide general information about adverse reactions and factors related to a greater risk occurrence of those reactions. Based on a practical case, the authors respond to five questions on features having casual relationship between a pharmaceutical product and an adverse reaction by means of which it is possible to define the plausibility of suspected adverse effects.