Toward optimal drug therapy

Abstract

The medical community has allocated enormous amounts of time, energy, and resources to improving instruments and techniques for diagnosis but has given little emphasis to optimizing drug therapy once the diagnosis has been established. The goal of the series of articles beginning in this issue is to acquaint practitioners with the advantages of therapeutic drug monitoring. in this introductory article, Drs McCoy and Cipolle describe how to identify patients who will benefit from monitoring and how to time measurements so that results are most meaningful. Subsequent articles will provide specific information for major therapeutic classes of drugs.