Trigger medicines to identify adverse drug reaction in a hospital

Abstract

Taking in consideration the patient safety with a focus on pharmacovigilance, this study aimed to evaluate the  use of trigger drugs to assess adverse drug reactions in one university hospital in Northern Brazil. This is a cross-sectional study held from April to July 2015. From the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s global trigger tool  for  measuring  adverse  events,  we  elaborated  a  trigger  medicine  list,  comprising  ten  drugs  in  total. Prescriptions  of all patients admitted during the study period. Patients with at least one trigger drug prescribed were included in  the  analysis.  The  reasons  for  using  the  medicine  was  then  assessed  with  patients  and  medical  records.  The  results  were  compared  to  the  reactions  identified  through  active  surveillance  held  directly  with  patients,  the  hospital standard. From 12,784 prescriptions assessed, 6,765 had trigger medicines (53%). Of this total, 31 were evaluated for adverse drug reaction suspected and four cases werw confirmed adverse reaction, representing 25% of all adverse reaction identified in the same period by the standard active surveillance. Despite making possible to identify adverse drug reaction, the use of trigger drugs method could not identify all adverse reactions recorded in the period. In contexts where there is no possibility to conduct active surveillance, the use of trigger medicines maybe a viable alternative to perform pharmacovigilance in the hospital setting.