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Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 18e
| Part 1. Introduction to Clinical Medicine > |
Chapter 5. Principles of Clinical Pharmacology
Sections: Principles of Clinical Pharmacology: Introduction, Principles of Pharmacokinetics, Principles of Pharmacodynamics, Principles of Dose Selection, Effects of Disease on Drug Concentration and Response, Genetic Determinants of the Response to Drugs, Interactions between Drugs, Adverse Reactions to Drugs, Summary, Further Readings.
Topics Discussed: clinical pharmacology discipline; pharmacology.
Excerpt:"Drugs are the cornerstone of modern therapeutics. Nevertheless, it is well recognized among physicians and in the lay community that the outcome of drug therapy varies widely among individuals. While this variability has been perceived as an unpredictable, and therefore inevitable, accompaniment of drug therapy, this is not the case. The goal of this chapter is to describe the principles of clinical pharmacology that can be used for the safe and optimal use of available and new drugs.It is self-evident that the benefits of drug therapy should outweigh the risks. Benefits fall into two broad categories: those designed to alleviate a symptom and those designed to prolong useful life. An increasing emphasis on the principles of evidence-based medicine and techniques such as large clinical trials and meta-analyses have defined benefits of drug therapy in broad patient populations. Establishing the balance between risk and benefit is not always simple. An increasing body of evidence supports the idea, with which practitioners are very familiar, that individual patients may display responses that are not expected from large population studies and often have comorbidities that typically exclude them from large clinical trials. In addition, therapies that provide symptomatic..."
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