Drug counseling during pregnancy plays an important role in eliminating anxiety concerning the adverse effects of drugs on fetuses and explaining the importance of drug administration during pregnancy. In the Outpatient Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Niigata University Medical and Dental Hospital, together with obstetricians, pharmacists have provided information on the adverse effects of drugs administered during pregnancy on fetuses (teratogenicity) since March 22, 1995. Up to March 31, 2006, 269 patients had received such counseling.
In this study, we investigated the timing of a decrease in the work of searching for information on drugs, and evaluated strategies for the development of drug counseling.
According to the order in which drug counseling was requested by obstetricians, 250 patients were first divided into groups of 50 patients each, and then the quantity of drugs with general names as a percentage of the total number of drugs with trade names was determined. For 247 patients (3 excluded because they were women who had received counseling on drugs prescribed to their husbands), the percentage of drugs with general names of the total of those with trade names was 37.4% (413/1,103).
Our results suggested that there would need to be about 650 drugs with general names in the database of information on the adverse effects of drugs taken during pregnancy on the fetus to provide effective drug counseling in the future. They also suggested that the work of searching for information on drugs decreased after counseling 100 patients.
