Adverse effects of drugs are frequently encountered in clinical practice. Drug allergies occur due to the development of drug spesific antibody’s or sensitized T cells. Symptoms are nonspesific and may involve one or more organ systems. Diagnosis is based on the clinical findings. Skin tests are only available for limited number of drugs. These are performed as prick, intradermal or patch tests. Laboratory evaluation is expensive, time consuming and only meaningful after serial measurements. Application of provocation tests under appropriate conditions give valuable information for diagnosis of drug allergies. Prevention of drug reactions is very important. Drugs must be used for absolute indication. Alternative therapy medications should be chosen for patients with known drugs allergy history. Premedication may be useful for some drugs. If there is not an available alternative for the drug that the allergic patient needs , desensitization may be practised. If a reaction developes in spite of all the precautions, local and systemic reactions must be treated properly.

Drug allergy Adverse drug reactions