Adverse cutaneous drug reactions among hospitalized patients: five year surveillance

Cutaneous Adverse Drug Reactions (CADRs) are observed in 2-3% of hospitalized patients. The clinical presentation of the CADRs varies among different populations.

To study the CADRs in hospitalized patients and their outcome.

Patients hospitalized at our department between 2005 May and 2010 May were retrospectively reviewed for the diagnosis of CADRs.

A total of 94 patients (3.3%) were diagnosed with CADR among 2801 hospitalized patients. Of them, 56 patients were female (59.6%) and 38 patients were male (40.4%). The culprit drugs were antibiotics (24.5%), non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) (22.4%), anticonvulsants (13.8%), antihypertensive agents (8.5%), paracetamol with or without pseudoephedrine or phenylephrine (6.4%), intravenous contrasts (3.2%), terbinafine (2.1%), biologic agents (2.1%) and various other medications (17.0%). The most common clinical type of CADRs was morbilliform exanthemas in 59.6% of the patients, followed by erythroderma (6.4%), drug reactions with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (6.4%), lichenoid drug reaction (5.3%), urticaria and angioedema (4.3%), acute generalized exanthematous pustulosis (4.3%), drug-induced vasculitis (3.2%), drug induced psoriasis (2.1%), Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis overlap (2.1%), psoriasiform drug reaction (2.1%). Fixed drug reaction, erythema multiforme, bullous drug reaction, drug induced panniculitis were observed in one each. No deaths occurred on the follow-up. Fever was observed in 35.1% of the patients. Eosinophilia was present in 51.1% of them. Latency period ranged between 0-15 days in 59 patients (62.8%), 15-30 days in 19 patients (20.2%), 30-90 days in 13 patients (13.8%), 90-120 days in three of them (3.2%). The latency for anticonvulsant drugs was statistically longer than the other group of drugs (p: 0.027).

CADRs were more common in women and most of them were caused by antimicrobial agents followed by NSAIDs and anticonvulsants. Latency period of anticonvulsants were longer than the other groups.