Adverse Drug Reactions in the Post Coronary Care Unit Inpatients of a Teaching Hospital

The monitoring and reporting of adverse drug reactions (adrs) in hospitals aims toidentify and quantify the risks associated with the use of drugs. the present study wasperformed to characterize the rate and the pattern of adrs, due to cardiovascular drugs andanticoagulants, in a tertiary care teaching hospital. for this purpose, all the patients treatedwith cardiovascular drugs and anticoagulants in the post coronary care unit (ccu) fromseptember 2006 until january 2007 were actively monitored for adrs. data evalution wasconducted for various parameters which included patient demographics , number of prescribeddrugs, drug and reaction characteristi cs, and outcome of the reactions . assessment was alsodone for causality, seriousness, and preventability. a total of 64 adrs during the 4 monthsstudy period were evaluated. the overall rate ofadrs calculated from the patient populationwas 53%. no significant difference was seen in the overall rate ofadrs in males vs. females.the most commonly affected organ was gastro-intestinal system (14.06%). nitrogly cerintablet (long-acting) and digoxin were the drugs most frequently reported (28.28%). in 20.31%of the reports, the patient had recovered from the reaction at the time of data collection. uponcausality assessment, the majority of the reports were rated as probable (64.06%). serious andnon-serious reactions accounted for 3.13% and 96.87% of the adrs, respectively. in 9.37%of the reports, reaction was considered to be preventable. our data revealed that adrs in thepost ccu occur rather frequently during hospitalization. such studies enable us to obtaininformation on the rate and pattern of adrs in the local population. these evaluat ions needto be followed by dissemination of the information to healthcare professionals to improve thequality of patient care and ensure safer use of drugs.