Abstract
Adverse Drug Reactions are acknowledged as one of the hazardous consequences of the drug therapy. A wide range of surveillance programs on adverse drug reactions should be emphasized, in our Indian scenario to strengthen the database. Hence, in our study, we focused on the incidence of adverse drug reactions, their causality & severity assessment and the reporting strategies of ADRs among health care professionals in the department of internal medicine especially, where the exposure of drugs to the patient would be more. This was a prospective observational study conducted for a period six months. Patients with suspected ADRs from the internal medicine department with both the genders and all age groups were included in the study. Patients with drug abuse and patients with intentional or accidental poisoning with drugs were excluded from the study. For the assessment of causality and severity Naranjo’s scale and modified Hartwig & Siegal scale were used respectively and the reactions were classified based on Wills and Brown classification. In our study, the overall incidence of ADRs was found to be 2.66% and the main predisposing factor was observed to be poly pharmacy (43.9%). Majority of the ADRs were possible (54.9%) with moderate severity (86.6%) and a maximum number of type A (78.1%) reactions were observed. Specific or symptomatic treatment was provided for 44% of the ADRs. Anti ulceratives caused maximum number of ADRs (42.6%). In conclusion, females are more prone to ADRs than males in our study. All health care professionals and patient volunteers must come forward to report adverse drug reactions in order to minimize the ADRs incidence and to improve the quality of life of the patients.
