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Adverse Drug Reactions Leading to Hospital Admission

  • Original Research Article
  • Epidemiology
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Summary

This article describes the implementation of a simple method of drug surveillance set up at a hospital emergency ward. From a total of 48678 patients admitted, the medical records of those presenting with one or more of a pre-established list of admission diagnoses (n = 7728; 15.8%) were checked. Of these 554 (1.1%) were diagnosed as experiencing an adverse drug reaction. When the medical record suggested an adverse drug reaction, drugs taken before admission were ascertained by interviewing the patients with a structured questionnaire.

After excluding upper gastrointestinal bleeding (226 cases) and certain bone marrow blood dyscrasias (42 cases), 286 patients with drug-induced events leading to hospital admission were identified in 2 years. Fatal adverse drug reactions, previously undescribed reactions, and some specific examples, such as digoxin-amiodarone interaction, drug-induced pancreatitis, nicardipine-induced AV block, severe skin reactions, and NSAID-induced bronchospasm, are described.

Basically, this method consists of assembling series of cases systematically, and is therefore devoid of selective bias. In addition, it allows a more indepth clinical and anamnesic study of specific diseases, as compared with voluntary reporting.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Servei de Farmacologia Clínica, HU Vall d’Hebron, Unitat de Farmacologia Clínica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08035, Barcelona, Spain

    Luisa Ibáñez,  Joan-Ramon Laporte & Xavier Carné

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  1. Luisa Ibáñez
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  2. Joan-Ramon Laporte
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  3. Xavier Carné
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Ibáñez, L., Laporte, JR. & Carné, X. Adverse Drug Reactions Leading to Hospital Admission. Drug-Safety 6, 450–459 (1991). https://doi.org/10.2165/00002018-199106060-00005

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.2165/00002018-199106060-00005

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