January 3, 2012

Reducing the Risk of Adverse Drug Events

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/reducing-the-risk-of-adverse-drug-events/#more-18509

"Critics of mainstream medicine often point to the dangers of drugs. I previously wrote about “Death by Medicine,” where I explained the fallacy of fixating on harmful effects of drugs without putting them into perspective with all the good drugs do. Yes, patients have died from severe allergic reactions to penicillin, but penicillin has also saved countless lives.

A recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine looks at emergency hospitalizations for adverse drug events in elderly Americans. It confirms that adverse reactions are a serious problem, but some of its findings are surprising.

...

It is conceivable that the biggest problem drug could entirely drop off the list and 33% of drug-related hospitalizations could be prevented if only doctors managed Coumadin dosing more effectively and if patients complied better with instructions about medication and diet. At my local hospital (Madigan Army Medical Center), all patients on anticoagulation are managed by a Coumadin Clinic run by an experienced clinical pharmacologist using rigorous procedures and guidelines; I don’t have any figures, but I think that approach is much better than having individual doctors manage their own patients.

A pharmacist, Robert Steven Gold, has written a book with specific proposals for reducing medication risks. The title is Are Your Meds Making You Sick? The title led me to expect a typical anti-establishment rant about evil Big Pharma poisons. It is anything but. The format is engaging: it presents a series of mini-mystery case reports and challenges the reader to detect which drug is the culprit.

..."

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It's a short piece with good links to further pieces on this issue. I would recommend checking into those links as well as perusing this short piece. This is information that could make discussion on the health forum far more fruitful, at least in my opinion.