Asking patients to monitor their own medication can be
fatal, as is exemplified by the recent death of Heath Ledger. In
the first large-scale study of home medication consumption,
sociologists at the University of California San Diego, have
found a 3,196% increase in fatal domestic medication errors
involving alcohol and/or street drugs.
Their study examines nearly 50 million U.S. death certificates
from 1983 to 2004, and focuses on a subset of 200,000 deaths
from medication errors. The study appears in the July 28 issue
of the Archives of Internal Medicine, an official journal of the
American Medical Association.
"The decades-long shift in the location of medication
consumption from clinical to domestic settings," the authors
say, "is linked to a dramatic increase in fatal medication
errors."
"Increasingly, people take their medications at home, away from
hospitals and clinics. But most studies of fatal medication
errors have |
focused on those clinical settings. We wanted to know three
things: how many of these fatal errors happen at home; how many
involve alcohol and/or street drugs; and are these numbers going
up?"
They examined trends in four types of fatal medication errors.
They note that the increase in fatal errors varies by
astonishing amounts based on where the errors occur and the
particular combinations of drugs.
Type 1 errors – deaths at home from combining medications with
alcohol and/or street drugs – skyrocketed by 3,196 percent.
In sharp contrast, type 4 errors – non-domestic fatal errors not
involving alcohol or street drugs – show the smallest increase,
just 5 percent.
The intermediate types of errors increased by intermediate
amounts. Type 2 errors – domestic medication fatalities not
involving alcohol or street drugs – increased by 564 percent.
Type 3 errors – non-domestic medication fatalities involving
alcohol and/or street
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drugs – increased by 555 percent.
"Thus," the sociologists say, "domestic fatal medication errors,
combined with alcohol and/or street drugs, have become an
increasingly important health problem."
It also seems advisable to expand research on medication errors.
Much of this research has focused on elderly patients and
clinical settings. The present findings suggest that more
research should be devoted to middle-aged patients and domestic
settings."
The study was supported in part by a grant from the Marian E.
Smith Foundation.
Ledger, the actor, was cast as the Joker in the movie "The Dark
Knight," shortly before dying, on January 22, 2008, from an
accidental prescription-drug overdose at age 28.
Read this entire article:
University of California - San Diego (2008, July 29).
Deaths From Combining Rx Drugs, Street Drugs And/Or Alcohol
Skyrocket By More Than 3,000 Percent. ScienceDaily.
Retrieved June 16, 2009 |
