'One in seven' suffer reactions to hospital drugs
One in seven people admitted to hospital experience adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to medical treatment, new research claims.
ADRs are a significant problem in hospital inpatients, contributing to morbidity and mortality and resulting in considerable financial burden. This new study now suggests half of these ADRs are avoidable.
Scientists at the University of Liverpool studied more than 3,000 patients and assessed their reactions to hospital drugs over a six-month period. They found 15 per cent of the patients experienced one or more adverse responses, including constipation, confusion, renal problems, bleeding and infection with Clostridium difficle.
The most frequently implicated drugs were opioid analgesics, diuretics, systemic corticosteroids, anticoagulants and antibiotics. When adjusted for the frequency of prescription, warfarin, fibrinolytics and unfractionated heparin were the top three causes of ADRs.
The study explains: “It is worrying to note that the same drugs, warfarin, loop diuretics and opioids, are being consistently implicated in different studies of ADRs; this may partly reflect their high usage, but nevertheless suggest that lessons have not been learnt from previous studies, and effective preventive strategies have not been put in place.”
Scientists at Liverpool University found that adverse reactions increased the length of a patient's hospital stay by an average of 0.25 days and that elderly patients on a number of different medications were most susceptible to ADRs. However, increasing age, admission to a medical ward and female gender, were identified as risk factors, with the number of medicines the patient was taking, leading as the significant risk factor.
The results of the study show the overall burden of ADRs on hospitals is high and new methods of intervention are needed to reduce this.
Professor Munir Pirmohamed, from the University of Liverpool’s School of Biomedical Sciences, concludes: “We are currently looking at a number of ways of improving the safety of medicines, including increased monitoring of patients and the identification of genetic factors that could increase the risk of a patient developing adverse effects. Our ultimate aim is to use a number of inter-related methods to allow us to maximise the benefits of medicines and minimise the harm.”