What Doctors Don't Tell YouMore than two out of every 100 hospital patients will suffer a serious reaction to a drug, new research has revealed. They are also twice as likely to die as a result. This new statistic, prepared by researchers from the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake Cit
Even so, drugs got off lightly in this latest survey. An earlier Boston study showed that 30 per cent of all hospital patients suffered some adverse reaction.
In a separate study, doctors from the Albany Medical Center in New York found that drugs were wrongly prescribed in 3.99 of 1000 orders. In all, 2103 errors of “clinical importance” were detected in a 631 bed teaching hospital in one year (JAMA, 1997; 277: 301-17).
For more information, see the WDDTY Guide to the Side Effects of Drugs and the Hospital Survival Guide.
Daniel Redwood DC
Tom Ferguson MD
