What causes adverse drug events?
Allergic reactions and combinations of incompatible medications often cause adverse drug events. These occur because of our inability to know everything about a drug and its potential effects before it is marketed. However, some adverse drug events are caused, or at least perpetuated, by human practices. These include patient non-compliance with medication recommendations, mistakes and administrative errors. With increased attention, both of these types of drug events could be minimized. Adverse reactions are commonly caused by allergic reactions to medications and interactions between multiple medications. Any given medication will cause allergies in some proportion of patients, and often the allergies will not be foreseeable prior to use of the drug. Interactions between multiple medications are often not determined in the pre-market phase of drug testing, so they too can cause ADRs in patients taking more than one drug. Although these complications seem unpreventable, there are ways
Allergic reactions and combinations of incompatible medications often cause adverse drug events. These occur because of our inability to know everything about a drug and its potential effects before it is marketed. However, some adverse drug events are caused, or at least perpetuated, by human practices. These include patient non-compliance with medication recommendations, mistakes and administrative errors. With increased attention, both of these types of drug events could be minimized. Adverse reactions are commonly caused by allergic reactions to medications and interactions between multiple medications. Any given medication will cause allergies in some proportion of patients, and often the allergies will not be foreseeable prior to use of the drug. Interactions between multiple medications are often not determined in the pre-market phase of drug testing, so they too can cause ADRs in patients taking more than one drug. Although these complications seem unpreventable, there are ways
