Badillo BU

Language: Spanish
References: 17
Page: 18-22
PDF size: 71.24 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Adverse drug reactions are overall the most common form of iatrogenic illness, resulting in dangerous incapacitating and even life-threatening reactions in the elderly population. These adverse drug reactions make up 10% of all hospital admissions as a whole and represent billions of dollars in health-care expenses. This is a retrospective, longitudinal and descriptive study. The in-patient unit of the geriatric service, Hospital Reg 185 patients admitted to our in-patient unit over the period from March the 1st to August the 31st 2001. We made the diagnosis of polypharmacy in 27.5% of all admissions during the cited period of study, 78.4% of which were females and 21.6% males. With regard to the most common used drugs Cardiovascular agents represented the 76.4%, followed by those with activity at the gastrointestinal level (37.2%) and all classes of analgesics (35.2%), psychiatric drugs (33.3%), endocrinology drugs (23.5%), vitamins (17.6%), bronchodilators (9.8%) and agents with activity at the central nervous system (11.7%).

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