[Irrational use of drugs as a source of drug - induced diseases]. / Nieracjonalne stosowanie leków w pediatrii jako przyczyna chorób polekowych.

The irrational use of medication, by which we understand the administration of drugs for indications where their effectiveness has not been confirmed, the disregard of restrictions and warnings against their use, and the use of drug combinations which do not increase the therapeutic effect but to the contrary increase the risk of adverse drug reactions, is a serious problem encountered in paediatric pharmacotherapy. Each year the centres for monitoring of adverse drug reactions receive many reports, the analysis of which show that the reasons of occurrence of adverse drug reactions after drug administration, are specifically due to irrational use of medications. In order to prevent in an active way the occurrence, of adverse drug reactions following drug administration it is worthwhile to bring to attention the reasons for their occurrence which not infrequently bring about pathological effects. Our work which is based on reports received by the Regional Centre for Adverse Drug Reactions Monitoring in Krakow concerning the occurrence of adverse drug reactions in an attempt to bring to attention in our view important problems in current pharmacotherapy.

[Side effects, unwanted drug interactions and the problem of cardiotoxicity]. / Dzialania niepozadane i niekorzystne interakcje leków a problem kardiotoksycznosci.

The problem of drug interactions is very important in pharmacotherapy. The interactions of some drugs (antihistamines, macrolides, fluoroquinolones, cisapride) with other can induce ventricular arrhythmias. A lot of non-antiarrhytmic drugs can prolong the QT interval, induce torsade de pointes and cardiotoxicity.