Physicians order urine and oral fluid testing for a variety of reasons. If you are employed, you may be required to random or regular drug screening as a workplace mandate. If you are being treated by a physician, you may have to have your medication monitored in order to target opportunities for improvements in medical therapy. If you are at risk for substance abuse or behaving abnormally under physician care, you may be ordered to take a drug screening that will attempt to detect illicit or non-prescribed medications.
When physicians order medical therapy for a patient to treat anxiety, pain, depression, medical conditions, or other disorder, they often follow up with medication monitoring. This requires frequent drug screening to evaluate how the prescription medications are interacting and metabolizing in order to find opportunities for medication improvement.
Causes of inefficiency in prescription medication therapy:
There are several types of medications that can negatively interact causing adverse side effects or reduction of therapeutic properties. Some medications can cancel out effects of other drugs while other medications can have additive affects. Physicians monitor these interactions to keep patients safe from harmful side effects that can occur from mixing medications.
Causes of drug interactions:
Causes of medicine absorption issues:
The body primarily metabolizes medication through the liver while sometimes this process can begin in the wall of the gut, blood plasma, and lungs. Enzymes breakdown the medication by converting it into a water-soluble compound. This allows the medication to be excreted into the fluids of the body such as the bile or urine. Metabolism happens in two phases. The first is non-synthetic and involves oxidation, reduction, and hydrolysis. The second is synthetic through glucuronic acid, sulfate, and glycine. This process can be affected by genetics, drug concentration and metabolic rates.
Factors of drug metabolism
Compliance drug screening allows physicians and other health care providers with vital substance use information to help monitor the use of prescribed and non-prescribed medications. These types of testing may be legally or privately mandated by institutions or business for employment, rehabilitation facilities, or health care.
Types of compliance testing