JAMA Article Finds That Older Patients Are Most Likely To Have Such Problems
As recently discussed in our four-part series "ADRs in US" -- see sidebar, under heading Selected: 2006 -- adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are common and often preventable causes of injury to patients.
In the October 18, 2006 edition of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is an article entitled "National Surveillance of Emergency Department Visits for Outpatient Adverse Drug Events" which reveals that approximately 700,000 people a year go to the emergency room (ER) because of adverse reactions involving prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications.
The report, written by members of several federal agencies (namely, the CDC, the FDA, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission) is based on a representative sampling of 63 hospitals across the nation over a two-year period. Among other things, their analysis found that:
- Patients 65 or older made up 25% of those ER visits and almost half of those ER visits required a hospital admission;
- About 33% of the ER visits were the result of allergic reactions, while another third of the visits were attributable to unintentional overdoses;
- An estimated 40% of the ER visits involved a patient's use of CNS agents (especially opioid-containing analgesics) and systemic antimicrobials (especially amoxicillin).
The researchers concluded that adverse drug reactions that lead to visits to the emergency room is a significant cause of death in the U.S., particularly in patients who are more than 65 years old.
(Posted by: Tom Lamb)