Vol. 300 No. 13, October 1, 2008 JAMA
Mike Mitka. Emergency Departments See
High Rates of Adverse Events From Antibiotic Use. JAMA.
2008;300(13):1505-1506.
Antibiotic-associated adverse events are responsible for an unexpectedly high
rate of visits to emergency departments, accounting for nearly 1 in 5 visits for
medication-related adverse events, according to new findings by scientists with
the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The researchers analyzed 6614 cases of drug-related adverse events gleaned from
the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug
Event Surveillance project (2004-2006) and outpatient prescriptions from several
national sample surveys. Based on these data, the researchers estimated a rate
of 10.5 emergency visits per 10 000 US prescriptions written for antibiotics
generated by patient visits to private practice offices, hospital clinics, and
emergency departments, resulting in about 142 500 visits annually to emergency
departments. Antibiotic use accounted for about 19% of all drug-related adverse
events seen in emergency departments. The findings were posted online August 11
in Clinical Infectious Diseases (Shehab N et al. Clin Infect Dis. . . [Full Text
of this Article]
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