Adverse drug reactions are one of common problems during drug treatment, they occur in 3-10 % of all patients. In addition to the negative impact on well-being of patients health, they increase the likelihood of treating patients in an internal medicine first aid clinic, as well as the quality of treatment and the financial burden on the health care system.
With a non-interventional, retrospective study, we wanted to evaluate the incidence and type of side effects of drugs in patients, who were treated for 2 months in the internist first aid clinic, Emergency unit, University clinical centre Ljubljana.
Of the 3453 patients included in the study, 227 patients (6.6 %) experienced adverse drug reactions. We confirmed a significant association between the occurrence of adverse drug reactions and age, the number of comorbidities, the number of drugs and the presence of liver or renal impairment. 160/227 (70.4 %) of all patients were treated in the internist first aid clinic due to adverse drug reactions and among them 42 patients were referred to the Internal medicine clinic for further treatment.
74/273 (27.1 %) of adverse reactions were confirmed, with the remaining only suspected. 194/273 (71.1 %) of adverse drug reactions were assessed as serious and 21/273 (7.7 %) as severe. According to the Naranjo method, 252/273 (92.3 %) side effects were assessed as possible and only 1/273 (0.4 %) as certain. The majority of adverse drug reactions were from the group of metabolism and nutritional disorders (91 cases or 33.3 %) and from the group of gastrointestinal disorders (89 cases or 32.6 %). The most common side effects were GIT bleeding (30 cases), melena (27 cases), hyponatremia (26 cases). The active substances that most commonly caused adverse drug reactions were warfarin (42 cases), acetylsalicylic acid (26 cases) and indapamide (22 cases). We identified 169 potential drug-drug interactions, but we estimated that they were clinically expressed in only 13 cases of adverse drug reactions. Warfarin was most commonly involved in drug interactions. The most common measure to eliminate or alleviate the side effect was discontinuation of the drug, which was taken in 107/273 (53.2 %) cases of adverse drug reactions. Only 2 (0.7 %) cases of adverse reactions had a properly assigned classification code and only 3 (1.1 %) cases were reported through the hospital system.
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