Adverse Effect - Limitations of Adverse Effects Reporting

Limitations of Adverse Effects Reporting

In principle, medical professionals are required to report all adverse effects related to a specific form of therapy. In practice, it is at the discretion of the professional to determine whether a medical event is at all related to the therapy. For example, a leg fracture in a skiing accident in a patient who years before took antibiotics for pneumonia is not likely to get reported.

As a result, routine adverse effects reporting often may not include long-term and subtle effects that may ultimately be attributed to a therapy.

Part of the difficulty is identifying the source of a complaint. A headache in a patient taking medication for influenza may be caused by the underlying disease or may be an adverse effect of the treatment. In patients with end-stage cancer, death is a very likely outcome and whether the drug is the cause or a bystander is often difficult to discern.

Read more about this topic:  Adverse Effect

Famous quotes containing the words limitations, adverse, effects and/or reporting:

    That all may be so, but when I begin to exercise that power I am not conscious of the power, but only of the limitations imposed on me.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    [Religious establishment] is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity ... [because] with an ignoble and unchristian timidity it would [be] circumscribed, with a wall of defence, against the encroachments of error.
    James Madison (1751–1836)

    If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.
    François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)

    I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.
    Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)