Monotherapy of multiple drugs or combination therapy - Beginner 101

Question

Let's say that patient A is taking drugs like as shown below

|---atenolol-----esmolol----nebivolol---------------------|

|---s------e-----s-----e----s-------e---------------------|

here s and e indicates start and end date of drugs, meaning a patient started with atenolol first....after completing atenolol course, he started esmolol....after finishing esmolol, he started nebivolol...

So now, am I right to understand that patient was in monotherapy treatment throughout?

Though he had multiple drugs (which belonged to the same class) at different time points, he was on monotherapy. Am I right to understand this?

Answer 1

If it is planned this way, it can be seen to be combination therapy but generally it would be monotherapy throughout.

Generally speaking, monotherapy is using one medication to treat a condition. If that medication is not as effective as required and an alternative was later prescribed it is still monotherapy.

If more than one medication is prescribed in the same regime then it is combination therapy.

See this Wikipedia article for more information.