Adverse drug reactions as a cause of admission to a medical emergency department
Abstract
Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) have been regarded as a major public health problem as they represent a sizable percentage of admissions to Emergency Departments (EDs). The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of admissions to medical EDs and hospitalizations due to ADRs detected by emergency physicians. Methods: The study team of internal medicine specialists reviewed retrospectively 1,000 randomly selected medical records out of 23,000 patients referred to ED of the primary city and tertiary hospitals for ADRs detected by emergency physicians during patient presentation in 2009. Results: The established frequency of ED admissions due to ADRs was 3.7 % of all patients (37/1000). Bradycardia due to verapamil, digoxin and beta-blockers was the most common ADR and represented 20 % of all ADRs. 0.7 % of all patients admitted to the ED (7/1000) were hospitalized due to ADRs caused by beta-blockers, digoxin, diuretics, NSAID, acetylsalicylic acid, clopidogrel and tamoxifen. Conclusion: ADRs cause 3.7 % of all admissions at the medical ED. 0.7 % of all patients admitted to the medical ED are hospitalized due to ADRs, which represents 2.2 % of patients hospitalized through the medical ED at internal medicine departments (7/320).Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The Author transfers to the Publisher (Slovenian Medical Association) all economic copyrights following form Article 22 of the Slovene Copyright and Related Rights Act (ZASP), including the right of reproduction, the right of distribution, the rental right, the right of public performance, the right of public transmission, the right of public communication by means of phonograms and videograms, the right of public presentation, the right of broadcasting, the right of rebroadcasting, the right of secondary broadcasting, the right of communication to the public, the right of transformation, the right of audiovisual adaptation and all other rights of the author according to ZASP.
The aforementioned rights are transferred non-exclusively, for an unlimited number of editions, for the term of the statutory
The Author can make use of his work himself or transfer subjective rights to others only after 3 months from date of first publishing in the journal Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal.
The Publisher (Slovenian Medical Association) has the right to transfer the rights of acquired parties without explicit consent of the Author.
The Author consents that the Article be published under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 (attribution-non-commercial) or comparable licence.
