Three Adverse Drug Interactions Every Dentist Should Know About
Speaker
Dr. Hersh is currently a Professor of Pharmacology/Oral Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine. He received his DMD degree from Rutgers-NJDS in 1981 and his MS and PhD degrees from Rutgers – Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 1983 and 1988 respectively. Since arriving at the PENN in 1988, Dr. Hersh has won the Dental School’s Excellence in the Teaching of Basic Science Award 20 different times and was also presented with a University Lindback Award in 1993, the highest teaching honor at the University. He has published more than 160 scientific articles, abstracts and book chapters in the areas of dental pharmacology, drug interactions, analgesics and local anesthetics. His clinical research studies in the areas of acute postsurgical pain control and local anesthesia played an important role in the eventual FDA approval and marketing claims for such diverse products as 4% articaine plus 1:200,000 epinephrine (Septocaine 1:200,000), phentolamine mesylate (Oraverse), the lidocaine transmucosal patch (Dentipatch), diclofenac Prosorb (Zipsor), and ibuprofen Liquigel (Advil Liquigels).
He is currently collaborating with faculty from the Penn Institute of Translational Medicine and Applied Therapeutics in identifying biomarkers that may predict individual analgesic response to NSAIDs. He remains passionate about providing students and practitioners with evidence-based data to reduce the unnecessary use of, and when needed the prescribing of excessive amounts of immediate-release opioid formulations. His scholarly and research contributions in the areas of local anesthesia and pain control were recognized by the International Association of Dental Research in 2007 when he was presented with the Distinguished Scientist Award in Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Toxicology. Dr. Hersh states “that while the research accolades are nice, the most important thing I do is sharing this knowledge with my students and other dental professionals”.
Disclosure: Dr Hersh has received grant funding from Pfizer Consumer Healthcare the maker of Advil® products, NIH/NIDA, and the PENN Medicine Center of Precision Medicine. He has also received consulting moneys from Bayer Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Aleve®.
Course Description
This presentation will focus on two areas: 1) Serious drug interactions that may occur in the Dental Patient because of drugs the dentist prescribes or administers 2) Serious adverse drug interactions that may occur in the Dentist himself/herself because of drugs that are taken for various medical conditions. The knowledge gleamed in this course will enhance patient safety by providing the dentist with the theoretical basis and clinical significance of each interaction.
Educational Objectives
- Discuss the pharmacological mechanism behind the potentially lethal metronidazole or fluconazole/warfarin interaction.
- Identify the common characteristic shared among most drugs involved in the most serious adverse drug: drug interactions.
- Identify which class of anti-hypertensive drugs where high but therapeutic doses of local anesthetic plus epinephrine (i.e. 2% lidocaine plus 1:100,000 epinephrine) is most likely to cause a severe hypertensive reaction with a reflex bradycardia.
- Discuss the rationale of why ibuprofen (Advil®) and naproxen sodium (Aleve®) should be avoided in a bipolar disorder patient taking lithium (Eskalith®).
- Identify a common food product that greatly increases blood levels of oral midazolam and statin cholesterol lowering drugs.
- Explain why in the movie "Something’s Gotta To Give", Jack Nicholson starts pulling his intravenous lines out when the emergency room doctor played by Keanu Reeves starts administering him a drug of the nitroglycerin class.
This program is presented by
Contact
For information, please contact Penn Dental Medicine Continuing Dental Education at:
PDMContinuingEd@dental.upenn.edu