Drug
side-effects 'kill thousands'
More than 10,000 patients could be dying each year because of bad side-effects from medicinal drugs.
A report in the British Medical Journal said adverse reactions to drugs, including aspirin and anti-depressants, accounted for one in every 16 hospital admissions. Little wonder hospitals are overcrowded. Beds are taken by patients suffering from the medicines doctors prescribed.
Researchers estimated that these admissions cost the NHS £466 million a year. And who pays for the NHS? You do!
They called for urgent measures to reduce the burden on the NHS and improve prescribing practices.
The researchers, from Liverpool University, studied 18,820 patients, aged over 16, who were admitted to two NHS hospitals in Merseyside during a six-month period in 2001-2002.
The patients were assessed to find out whether their admission to hospital was due to a reaction to their drugs.
The team found that 1,225 admissions were related to adverse drugs reactions, with an average stay of eight days.
Most of the patients recovered, but 28 died because of the reaction - most from gastrointestinal bleeding caused by aspirin, or aspirin reacting with another drug.
Aspirin, which is often prescribed to patients to avoid heart disease, was most commonly implicated - accounting for 18% of the admissions.
Aspirin is prescribed to reduce blood clotting. Yet it's well known that Omega 3 fatty acids in fish oils do this more effectively - without any danger. Anyone who for any reason doesn't like fish derived Omega 3 can get it in hemp oil instead. But doctors choose to prescribe a drug that can be dangerous.
Other
drugs which caused a bad reaction included the anti-clotting drug warfarin,
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like
ibuprofen and diuretics, used to treat fluid retention, given to people
with kidney and heart disorders and used to treat high blood pressure.
Again Omega 3 oil achieves the same without
side effects.
But the researchers estimated that 72 per cent of the side effects may be avoidable with better prescribing patterns.
The team, led by Professor Munir Pirmohamed, said it was possible that at any one time up to seven 800-bed hospitals may be occupied by patients admitted because of reactions to their drugs.
They also estimated that side effects causing hospital admission were responsible for the deaths of 5,700 patients a year in England.
Taking into account incidents occurring while patients were in hospital and admissions together, the figure could be greater than 10,000 a year. Although a group of doctors who gave up on drugs, estimated deaths at more like 20,000 a year. And 141,000 severely disabled.
"Simple measures such as regular review of prescriptions, the use of computerised prescribing and the involvement of pharmacists may reduce the deaths caused by side effects," they said.
"Interactions (between different drugs) accounted for one in six cases in this study," they said.
This study omitted long-term side effects of drugs like statins, used to reduce cholesterol levels. A report in the Journal of The American Medical Association said that patients whose cholesterol levels were reduced through use of statins were 241% more likely to suffer a heart attack than if their cholesterol levels stayed high.
Story published: 2nd July 2004
©2004 Natural Good Health
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