Pharmacology

To acquire
- pharmacological knowledge necessary for prescribing and administering commonly used medicines in dentistry, with a good knowledge of their composition, their primary and secondary effects and their indications with particular attention to elderly patients, paediatric patients, pregnant women
- a good knowledge, from the professional practice point of view, of the primary, secondary and side effects of drugs which the patient is treated for other medical treatments
- the fundamental principles of Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and Toxicology
- the therapeutic bases and methods of drug administration
- knowledge of the different classes of drugs and how they work by considering their biological and molecular mechanisms
- understanding the variability of drug response in relation to genetic and pathophysiological factors of patients and possible drug interactions
- knowledge of factors that could affect the desired therapeutic effect and the risk / benefit ratio of a pharmacological therapy

To achieve these objectives the student must acquire in-depth knowledge on
- the several methods of administration and fate of drugs in the body: the processes of biotransport, biotransformation / metabolic bioactivation, distribution and elimination of drugs
- the action of drugs at the level of organs and systems, considering their mechanism of action at the cellular and molecular level;
- the features of the pharmacological agents in the dental practice with their mechanism of action and fate inside the human body
- criteria for the differentiation between molecules within the same class, also considering the potential toxicity and physio-pathological characteristics of the patient
- the features of the drugs with a wide therapeutic use and/or administered chronically to consider with the aim to prevent possible abnormal responses to dental drugs
- possible interactions between drug therapies