Drug Side Effects Land Patients Back In Hospital

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 07 Sep 2009 - 2:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Drug side effects cause one in five emergency readmissions to hospital within a year of inpatient treatment, over half of which may be avoidable. These were the key findings from an analysis of information about 1000 patients admitted to a large Liverpool hospital, and presented at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's annual event, the British Pharmaceutical Conference, in Manchester. Complete data were available on 290 of 403 patients who were back in hospital within a year of their first admission. In 21% of these 290 patients, an adverse drug reaction contributed to re-admission.

Overall, 91 suspected adverse reactions were identified and 22% of prescriptions for the medicines causing the side-effects were started during the patient's initial stay in hospital. A further 25% were started after the patient was discharged.

Aspirin prescribed to prevent strokes and heart attacks, and diuretics commonly used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure, were the medicines most commonly linked to adverse reactions leading to hospital readmission. Elderly patients were at greatest risk. Of the 91 adverse reactions, 57% were judged to be definitely or possibly avoidable.

"While medicines have lots of benefits, they can also have harmful side-effects resulting in re-admission to hospital" said Emma Davies, Research Pharmacist and study investigator, from the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust. "Managing this involves checking patients' medicines while they are in hospital and regularly reviewing prescriptions in primary care after patients are discharged."

The British Pharmaceutical Conference is the flagship annual conference of the RPSGB and is now in its 147th year. This year, it takes place in Manchester from Sunday 6 September - Wednesday 9 September inclusive. Around 1000 pharmacists from the UK and internationally will convene to debate practice issues and scientific developments affecting the profession during the four-day event.

Research released at BPC is published in the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology.

Source
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain

• Additional
• References
• Citations