This book has been advertised as a text that "will help the pharmacist provide safer treatment for the patient and will prevent any medical-legal complications due to improper use of multiple drug therapy." Perhaps I am old-fashioned but I thought the patient's physician still prescribes drugs for his patients. I do not believe that any text will prevent medical-legal complications due to improper use of drugs.
Is or will this handbook be useful to practicing physicians and pharmacists? My answer is a qualified 'yes.' It is helpful in that it provides information about drug-drug interactions of over 1,300 drugs. Obviously, we do not know about many such interactions, so that revisions must be frequent if the author wishes to maintain the usefulness of this book.
The text will be less popular in foreign countries since most of the headings are American proprietary names. There is, however, a separate generic name