Executive Summary

Adverse drug events resulted in an estimated 701,547 emergency room visits during each of the past two years, according to a federal study led by the CDC. One of every six of these ADEs required a subsequent hospital admission, transfer to another health care facility, or emergency department admission/observation, report Daniel Budnitz et al. in the Oct. 18 issue of JAMA. Among hospitalized patients, most ADEs were from unintentional overdoses, "and two-thirds of these were due to toxicity from a relatively small set of drugs for which regular monitoring is commonly required to prevent acute toxicity." Of the 18 drugs most commonly causing ADEs, 16 have been in use for more than 20 years. Insulins or warfarin were involved in one in seven of the ADEs treated in emergency departments. The CDC study is based on 2004 and 2005 data from the NEISS-CADES project, which is continuing to collect data on specific patient populations, drug classes, conditions and circumstances in an effort to identify measures to reduce outpatient ADEs...