San Francisco
Chronicle" April 15, 1998
Report on article from: "New York Times".
"Warning on
Deadly Drug Side Effects"
"More
than 100,000 people a year die in American hospitals from adverse
reactions to medication, making drug reactions one of the leading
causes of death in the United States, researchers are reporting
today."
"The
deaths, as described in the current issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association, are not due to mistakes by doctors
in prescribing drugs or by patients in using them."
"Rather,
drug reactions occur because virtually all medications can have
bad side effects in some people, even when taken in proper doses."
"Even
when the cause is known to be a drug, that is rarely recorded
on the death certificate ..."
"
A certificate might list a stomach hemorrhage as the cause of
death without mentioning the drug that brought it on."
"In
1994, for example, there were 106,000 such deaths as well as about
2.2 million nonfatal adverse drug reactions."
"No
comprehensive records are kept of medication-related deaths, ..."
"Doctors
and hospitals rarely report such deaths."
"Health
care officials are not required even to keep track of them, ..."
"'Do
you want to guess how many death certificates in 1994 showed deaths
due to drug reactions? ... It was 156.' "
"Using
the lowest estimate makes drug reactions the sixth-leading cause
of death in the Unites States, higher than diabetes and pneumonia
and lower than heart disease, cancer, stroke, lung disease and
accidents".
