Intensive adverse drug reaction monitoring in various speciality clinics of a Teriary Care Hospital in North India

Adverse drug reactions are a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Indian studies in this regard are few and bulk of information comes from the developed countries. A study was carried out by National Pharmacovigilance center, All India Institute of Medical Sciences to know the incidence of adverse drug reactions in various departments of the institute. Intensive adverse drug reaction monitoring was carried out in various clinical departments like internal medicine, orthopaedics, psychiatry, hematology and institute rotary cancer hospital (IRCH) in AIIMS. The study included both in-hospital patients and patients from outpatient department from June 1999 to August 2000. 804 patients were taken in this study. A total of 804 (Males=452, Females=352) patients were studied and out of these 180 (22.38%) were found to have adverse drug reactions. The incidence in individual departments were as follows: Internal Medicine-26 (20.8%), Orthopeadics-42 (19.3%), Psychiatry-53 (24.7%), Hematology-31 (14.2%) and Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital-28. This calls for the urgent need to reinforce the pharmacovigilance in the country.