by David Rose
Nearly 3,000 patients have died in the past three years as a result of taking medicines intended to help them, official figures show.
Thousands more have been hospitalised after suffering harmful side-effects or serious allergic reactions to prescription drugs and other medications.
Almost half of the deaths occurred last year, while the number of reported adverse drug reactions has increased by 45 per cent over a decade. Growing numbers of patients taking aspirin and other medications for chronic illness such as heart disease could be fuelling the trend, experts suggest.
A total of 964 UK patients died because of suspected drug reactions in 2006, more than 200 after lengthy stays in hospital. A further 4,432 patients were also hospitalised but survived, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show.
Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) describe the unwanted, negative consequences associated with the use of any medications, as a result of medical error or otherwise. They represent a considerable burden on the NHS, accounting for 1 in 16 hospital admissions, at a cost of up to £466 million a year.
Patients admitted because of ADRs stay an average of eight days in hospital, research suggests, meaning that at any one time they take up the equivalent of up to seven 800-bed hospitals in England alone. Over the past three years, 2,846 patients died as a result of a suspected ADR, while 13,643 patients were hospitalised, the figures show.
Drugs most commonly implicated in adverse reactions include low-dose aspirin, diuretics, the anticoagulant drug warfarin and other nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs.
The most common problem associated with these medications is gastrointestinal bleeding, which can be fatal. But many of the reactions were likely to be because of incorrect dosages or known interactions of the drugs and as such were avoidable, research suggests.
The latest figures were revealed in answer to parliamentary questions by the Liberal Democrats. Norman Lamb, the party’s health spokesman, commented: “This is a dangerously escalating problem, which is putting lives at risk and placing a big cost burden on the NHS.” In addition, new “treatment targets” for specific long-term diseases, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, are likely to lead to more patients taking medicines with possible interactions and side-effects, he said.
Approximately 20,000 reports of adverse drug reactions are made to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and Commission for Human Medicines every year through a spontaneous reporting system known as the “yellow card” scheme. But Dawn Primarolo, the Minister for Public Health, admitted that the yellow card scheme “is associated with an unknown level of underreporting”.
“In addition, it is important to note that the submission of a suspected ADR report does not necessarily mean that it was caused by the drug,” she added.
But the Government’s Chief Medical Officer said that the NHS could be better at learning from its prescribing mistakes. At a conference held by the National Patient Safety Agency last month, Sir Liam Donaldson said that drug allergies were a significant cause of avoidable harm in hospitals. He has also recommended that NHS organisations should be fined if patients are harmed while in their care.
“When someone has a known allergy and we give them the drug in error or a lack of awareness as to what’s being prescribed, the results can be fatal,” he said. “Although these are not common events, some mistakes are capable of being repeated and we have to become better at learning from these mistakes.”
Sir Liam recalled the case of Teresa Innes, 38, who lapsed into a coma in September 2001 after a surgeon at Bradford Royal Infirmary prescribed a drug containing penicillin as she was about to undergo a routine procedure to drain fluid from an abscess on her thigh. Despite wearing a red allergy band on her wrist and medical notes giving warning about her acute aversion to the antibiotic, Mrs Innes was given the drug Magnapen, which staff did not realise contained penicillin.
The former care worker suffered an-aphylactic shock, which stopped her heart for 35 minutes, resulting in permanent brain damage. She was left in a persistent vegetative state from which she never recovered. She died two years later.
Sir Liam added: “This is a tragic and avoidable case.”
1 response so far ↓
DNADiva // July 14, 2009 at 4:30 pm
The tragic death of Michael Jackson has the potential to create an important “learning moment” for physicians and patients. According to the Journal of American Medical Association, adverse drug reactions are the “4th to 6th leading cause of death” in the US. The published reports of Mr. Jackson’s medications illustrate an important issue- any two drugs may be safe in combination but the cumulative effect of many drugs can be difficult to detect and very dangerous, especially in people with reduced drug processing capacity.
Jessica Oesterheld, MD is one of the authors of the best selling Clinical Manual of Drug Interaction Principles for Medical Practice. After analyzing the purported medication list she noted that “many of the concentrations of these drugs would have been dangerously increased.” Propofol often causes accidental death in recreational users. Interactions between propofol and many of the drugs Jackson is alleged to have been taking, such as Paxil, Zoloft and the opioid pain medicines Demerol, Vicodin, and Dilaudid, increase the potential dangers of those drugs.
Dr. Oesterheld’s experience with adverse drug reactions led her to collaborate with Dr. Robert Patterson, a fellow clinical psychiatrist and computer programmer. Together they developed GeneMedRx, a tool for analyzing the cumulative effect of the many factors leading to adverse drug reactions including prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines, foods, herbal preparations, recreational drugs, and genetics that are missed by other drug interaction programs. The dangers inherent in Michael Jackson’s purported drug regimen would have been even greater for individuals with a positive DNA drug sensitivity test who comprise more than half of the population. DNA Drug Sensitivity Testing detects the up to 1000-fold person-to-person differences in drug processing capacity. You can see the “hidden” interactions GeneMedRx predicts at http://www.HealthandDNA.com/Jackson.
Genelex Corporation, Seattle, Washington is a DNA testing laboratory dedicated to reducing the high levels of morbidity and mortality that result from adverse drug reactions by personalizing medicine with the combination of DNA Drug Sensitivity Testing and GeneMedRx software.