E-DRUG: Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) Reporting by Patients (2)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dear colleagues,
The problem with collecting side effects data directly from patients is
that you will get thousands of reports on minor, mostly well known,
adverse reactions. In addition one often has to verify the data with
the patient's own physician, and then one runs into trouble. You will
almost certainly miss the rare, serious and life-threatening adverse
reactions one really wants to know about.
The key issue is that adverse reactions manifest themselves
primarily as medical symptoms or a medical syndrome which might
have many causes, one of them the ingestion of drugs. The great
majority of bone marrow dysplasias and skin reactions are NOT due
to drugs. Neither the pharmacist nor the patient has the necessary
insight and knowledge to determine whether such a disease is drug-
induced or not.
The best systems (UK, Denmark) are physician-oriented.
Leo Offerhaus MD PhD
Koedijklaan 1a, NL-1406KW Bussum, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-35-6923288 Fax: +31-35-6923290
E-mail: LO@EURONET.NL. CompuServe: 71530,15
Eur J Clin Pharmacol ONLY: POB 75552, NL-1070AN Amsterdam
--
Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.