Clinical relevance of drug-drug interactions : a structured assessment procedure.

Introduction: Computerised drug interaction surveillance systems (CIS) may be helpful in detecting clinically significant drug interactions. Experience with CIS reveals that they often yield alerts with questionable clinical significance, fail to provide relevant information on risk factors for the adverse reaction of the interaction and fail to detect all significant drug interactions. These problems highlight the importance of transparency and selectivity in choosing the drug interactions to be included in CIS.