01/03/2005
Prescribed medicines can make you ill says academic
A leading academic has claimed that around one in every 20 emergency admissions to hospital A&E units are due to people suffering adverse reactions to prescribed medicines.
Professor Hugh McGavock, Visiting Professor of Prescribing Science at the University of Ulster, said the figure increases to 10-12% in the over-70s age bracket, because elderly people are more susceptible to adverse effects of medication.
“It is essential for GPs across Europe to recognize that they can no longer prescribe solo,” Professor McGavock said to an audience at the University. “As in most hospitals, the pharmacists must become directly involved and responsible with the prescriber for quality assurance in both acute illnesses and long-term management of illness. In the UK it appears that everything possible has been done to discourage this happening for sixty years."
Professor McGavock said that the first pilot scheme in the UK involving doctors and pharmacists working together was currently under way in the Antrim area.
He also revealed that adverse effects of drug therapy are the fourth most common cause of death in the USA after heart disease, cancer and strokes.
The cost of treating medication related illness in the year 2000 was $177 billion – far in excess of the $100 billion cost of all medicines prescribed in the US in the same year, he added.
(MB/SP)
Professor Hugh McGavock, Visiting Professor of Prescribing Science at the University of Ulster, said the figure increases to 10-12% in the over-70s age bracket, because elderly people are more susceptible to adverse effects of medication.
“It is essential for GPs across Europe to recognize that they can no longer prescribe solo,” Professor McGavock said to an audience at the University. “As in most hospitals, the pharmacists must become directly involved and responsible with the prescriber for quality assurance in both acute illnesses and long-term management of illness. In the UK it appears that everything possible has been done to discourage this happening for sixty years."
Professor McGavock said that the first pilot scheme in the UK involving doctors and pharmacists working together was currently under way in the Antrim area.
He also revealed that adverse effects of drug therapy are the fourth most common cause of death in the USA after heart disease, cancer and strokes.
The cost of treating medication related illness in the year 2000 was $177 billion – far in excess of the $100 billion cost of all medicines prescribed in the US in the same year, he added.
(MB/SP)
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