Elderly patients 'at risk of adverse drug reactions in hospital'

Research into more than 3,000 patients found that one in seven had had a reaction to drugs they received in hospital.

Most susceptible were elderly patients, the study found, who were often already taking a handful of different medications.

Problems included bleeding, confusion, kidney damage and infection with Clostridium difficle, with some patients suffering more than one side effect.

Previous studies have shown that 250,000 people in Britain are admitted to hospital every year because of adverse reactions to a variety of prescribed drugs.

But there was little evidence of how common the problem was among patients already being treated in hospital.

The study, by researchers at the University of Liverpool, followed patients on 12 hospital wards over six months.

It also found that patients who had a reaction to the drugs they were given had to spend an average of an extra six hours in hospital.

Prof Munir Pirmohamed, one of the authors of the report, said: "A significant predictor of adverse drug reactions in hospitals is the number of medications a patient is taking; each additional drug treatment increases the risk of experiencing an adverse drug reaction.

"This is one of the reasons why elderly people experience a higher incidence of reactions than young people, as they have more health conditions and generally take more medications.

"Our results show that the overall burden of reactions on hospitals is high and therefore new methods of intervention are needed to reduce this.

"The results are consistent with data from other parts of the world and this is therefore not just an issue for Merseyside hospitals, but hospitals throughout the Western world."

The findings of the study, carried out with researchers from Liverpool John Moores University and the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital Trust, are published in the journal PLoS ONE.

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