[Survey of adverse reactions to drugs in hospitalized patients]

The prevalence of adverse reactions to drugs (ARD) varies between 0.7% and 35% in the general population, causing hospitalization in up 8% of the cases. It has been described that ARD occurs in 15% of hospitalized patients.

To know the prevalence of ARD by means of a survey carried out by the interviewing of hospitalized patients and the reviewing of clinical files in a third level hospital.

Three hundred and twenty eight patients out of 377 hospitalized individuals were included. Eighty one patients (24.6% referred adverse reactions to some drugs during or before their hospitalization. Of the group with ARD, 61.7% were women, with an average age of 48.2 years. Nearly 80% of the cases with ARD had had reactions to one drug, while the other half presented them to two or more medications. The Departments with the most cases of ARD were Cardiology and Hematology. fl-lactamic drugs (40%) were the first cause of ARD, followed by antineoplastics. The most frequent clinical manifestations were urticaria (18%) and angioedema. The most frequent types of probable reaction were by type-1 hypersenstivity and collateral effects. We found that 24% of the cases with ARD were not registered on the clinical files.

We found that one out of four in-hospital patients had history of adverse reactions to drugs, being women the most affected. The majority of cases with ARD had atopic history.fl-lactamic drugs were the first cause of ARD. We found a high under registration of ARD on clinical files.