[Establishment and effect of the drug safety management monitoring system]

Early detection and early treatment of adverse drug reactions have recently become more important. It is natural that physicians should treat adverse drug reactions carefully, but it is also important to establish a system for their early systematic detection and treatment. Therefore, by comparing current data with that preserved in our clinical laboratory's data management registry and identifying values significantly different from earlier values, we established a screening system for any condition which may have a possible relationship with drugs and feeds back the results to the physician(s) in charge (drug safety management monitoring system). The effectiveness of the system was then evaluated. The subjects were outpatients who visited the Diabetes Endocrine Metabolism Center of our hospital during a six-month period. Cases where the possibility of a relationship between abnormal changes of laboratory data and drugs was not ruled out were reported to the attending physician using a drug safety monitoring report form. In 14 of 34 cases reported, a relationship with drugs could not be ruled out. Two of these 14 cases were reported to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare because they were serious. Therefore, it was concluded that this system was useful for early detection of adverse reactions.