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Article: Preventable drug side effects largely caused by doctors' errors.
- Article from:
- Drug Week
- Article date:
- March 28, 2003
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2003 MAR 28 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Largely because of doctors' errors, older nonhospitalized Americans suffer about a half-million preventable drug side effects each year, ranging from nausea to life-threatening kidney failure, a study suggests.
About 20% of the side effects are caused by patients' mistakes, said the researchers, who studied about 30,000 people on Medicare in New England. But most of the preventable drug reactions result from doctors' errors.
"It's obvious that it's a major issue, a major problem," said Dr. Jerry Gurwitz, the lead researcher and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
The ...