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American Morning

Alarming New Study on Prescription Drug Interactions

Aired March 05, 2003 - 08:41   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Time to page Dr. Gupta. Can you hear me, Dr. Gupta?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I am here. Yes.

ZAHN: There is a new study concerning the safety of seniors who take prescription drugs. The study says side effects from the medication, ranging from nausea to life-threatening kidney failure are often preventable. So why are people dying from this?

GUPTA: Yes, well, it's a serious problem. I want to sort of break it down, because it is an interesting study, Paula. There have been a lot of of studies in the past looking at adverse drug effects. That is, drug interactions and other adverse drug effects in patients who are in the hospitals, but now there is a large study actually looking at patients who are in outpatient settings as well, not in the hospital.

They found that there are about 1.9 million adverse drug effects, again, among elderly non-hospital patients. And sort of an interesting thing, there has been, again, a lot of studies on this, but one of the things that they focus on is the fact that 90 percent of people age 65 and older take at least one prescription.

Go to the bottom number. Twelve percent of people are taking ten or more prescriptions a year. They wanted to look into this. So the researchers in Boston actually studied 30,000 people who were Medicare recipients, 65 and older, and tried to figure out how many of these adverse drug effects were, in fact, preventable, meaning that they could have been prevented by some particular means.

Twenty-eight percent was the number they came up with of all comers. Twenty-eight percent of all of this 1.9 million number preventable, potentially. Of the serious, life-threatening, or even fatal events, 50 percent of those were also preventable. So that was actually an alarming statistic for a lot of people who were doing this study.

The most commonly implicated type of medications? Blood thinners. A lot of times those blood thinners, such as Coumadin being one of the most common, can sometimes interact with other medications that also thin the blood. Some of the other medications being even over-the-counter. Some of the other types of adverse drug effect categories, cardiac medications, medications that lower your blood pressure, medications that actually are diuretics and analgesics, or pain medications. Those are the next three most commonly implicated things. But again, Paula, bottom line, 28 percent of that 1.9 million number potentially preventable, and 50 percent of the life-threatening things also potentially preventable.

ZAHN: I know it's impossible to assign blame in each one of these cases. Whose fault is it? Is it the combination of doctors not having the time to explain to patients all these side effects, or patients not taking the time to understand what they're told?

GUPTA: Well, the researchers asked that very question. It is a good question, and what they found was that 20 percent of the time, it was more on the patient end. Either they took the wrong medication, they took the wrong frequency, they took the wrong medication from somebody else. Sometimes that happens, mixing up the medications.

But most of the rest of the time, Paula, it was more on the either doctor or hospital side of things, either in the prescribing phase or the dispensing phase of things. Now sort of interestingly, after a medication is prescribed, some of these medications really have to be monitored very closely, like the blood thinners need to be monitored very closely to make sure someone's blood doesn't become too thin and cause bleeding. Some of these other medications may have effects on the liver or the kidneys, and really need to be monitored closely, and it was really between the prescribing phase and that monitoring phase where things tended to break down the most -- Paula.

ZAHN: Well, this is a very useful report. I hope folks out there learn from what you've said, because if you could turn those statistics around, it would be a very good thing, wouldn't it?

GUPTA: That's right. That's right. Very preventable deaths here.

ZAHN: Well, we appreciate the house call, doctor, as always.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired March 5, 2003 - 08:41   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Time to page Dr. Gupta. Can you hear me, Dr. Gupta?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I am here. Yes.

ZAHN: There is a new study concerning the safety of seniors who take prescription drugs. The study says side effects from the medication, ranging from nausea to life-threatening kidney failure are often preventable. So why are people dying from this?

GUPTA: Yes, well, it's a serious problem. I want to sort of break it down, because it is an interesting study, Paula. There have been a lot of of studies in the past looking at adverse drug effects. That is, drug interactions and other adverse drug effects in patients who are in the hospitals, but now there is a large study actually looking at patients who are in outpatient settings as well, not in the hospital.

They found that there are about 1.9 million adverse drug effects, again, among elderly non-hospital patients. And sort of an interesting thing, there has been, again, a lot of studies on this, but one of the things that they focus on is the fact that 90 percent of people age 65 and older take at least one prescription.

Go to the bottom number. Twelve percent of people are taking ten or more prescriptions a year. They wanted to look into this. So the researchers in Boston actually studied 30,000 people who were Medicare recipients, 65 and older, and tried to figure out how many of these adverse drug effects were, in fact, preventable, meaning that they could have been prevented by some particular means.

Twenty-eight percent was the number they came up with of all comers. Twenty-eight percent of all of this 1.9 million number preventable, potentially. Of the serious, life-threatening, or even fatal events, 50 percent of those were also preventable. So that was actually an alarming statistic for a lot of people who were doing this study.

The most commonly implicated type of medications? Blood thinners. A lot of times those blood thinners, such as Coumadin being one of the most common, can sometimes interact with other medications that also thin the blood. Some of the other medications being even over-the-counter. Some of the other types of adverse drug effect categories, cardiac medications, medications that lower your blood pressure, medications that actually are diuretics and analgesics, or pain medications. Those are the next three most commonly implicated things. But again, Paula, bottom line, 28 percent of that 1.9 million number potentially preventable, and 50 percent of the life-threatening things also potentially preventable.

ZAHN: I know it's impossible to assign blame in each one of these cases. Whose fault is it? Is it the combination of doctors not having the time to explain to patients all these side effects, or patients not taking the time to understand what they're told?

GUPTA: Well, the researchers asked that very question. It is a good question, and what they found was that 20 percent of the time, it was more on the patient end. Either they took the wrong medication, they took the wrong frequency, they took the wrong medication from somebody else. Sometimes that happens, mixing up the medications.

But most of the rest of the time, Paula, it was more on the either doctor or hospital side of things, either in the prescribing phase or the dispensing phase of things. Now sort of interestingly, after a medication is prescribed, some of these medications really have to be monitored very closely, like the blood thinners need to be monitored very closely to make sure someone's blood doesn't become too thin and cause bleeding. Some of these other medications may have effects on the liver or the kidneys, and really need to be monitored closely, and it was really between the prescribing phase and that monitoring phase where things tended to break down the most -- Paula.

ZAHN: Well, this is a very useful report. I hope folks out there learn from what you've said, because if you could turn those statistics around, it would be a very good thing, wouldn't it?

GUPTA: That's right. That's right. Very preventable deaths here.

ZAHN: Well, we appreciate the house call, doctor, as always.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com