Published 15 August 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1324
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1324

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Antibiotics account for 19% of emergency department visits in US for adverse events

Bob Roehr

1 Washington, DC

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Adverse events associated with antibiotics result in more than 142 000 visits a year to hospital emergency departments in the United States. The drugs were implicated in 19% of all emergency department visits for drug related adverse events.

The rate of 10.5 emergency department visits per 10 000 outpatient prescriptions of antibiotics "was higher than expected," says the paper in Clinical Infectious Diseases (doi: 10.1086/591126). That was about half the rate of events attributed to "high risk" drugs such as warfarin, insulin, and digoxin (20.6 visits per 10 000 prescriptions), the authors write.

The rate among infants aged 12 months old or younger was 50% greater than the overall figure, at 15.9 visits per 100 000 prescriptions.

The study, conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drew on data from 63 representative hospital sites across the country in 2004-6 and on prescription data from comprehensive national . . . [Full text of this article]


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