Pharmacology in Clinical Practice

Book excerpt: Pharmacology in Clinical Practice describes basic pharmacology, clinical pharmacology, including the pharmacology of important drug groups. The author reviews the general principles of clinical pharmacology including drug actions, absorption, disposition, and excretion. Most drugs are xenobiotics—compounds foreign and harmful to human living tissues. Drugs should be properly metabolized and converted to nontoxic substance before being excreted either through spontaneous changes not mediated by enzymes or through transformation by enzyme systems. The author also discusses pharmacokinetics, including drug plasma concentration, absorption, first-pass metabolism, distribution and elimination. The author addresses pharmacogenetics that deal with possible different responses to drug intake due to factors such as age, sex, liver or renal disease, smoking, diet. The book tackles other drugs, their uses, and characteristics such as antibacterial agents, obesity drug, cytotoxic drugs or those used in chemotherapy medicine. The author explains the diagnosis of drug ingestion, clinical signs of overdose, clinical course, and prophylactic measures for users to avoid drug overdose or self-poisoning. This book is intended for medical undergraduates, pharmaceutical technicians, pharmacists, students or professors in pharmacology or general medicine.