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Drug Reactions — a Major Cause of Death
Adverse drug reactions may cause the deaths of over 100,000 US hospital patients each year, making them a leading cause of death nationwide, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"The incidence of serious and fatal adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in US hospitals was found to be extremely high, " say researchers at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.
They carried on an analysis of 39 ADR-related studies at US hospitals over the past 30 years and defined an ADR as "any harmful, unintended, and undesired effect of a drug which occurs at doses used in humans for prevention, diagnosis, or therapy. "
An average 6.7% of all hospitalized patients experience an ADR every year, according to the researchers. They estimate that "in 1994, overall 2,216,000 hospitalized patients had serious ADRs, and 106,000 had fatal ADRs. " This means that ADRs may rank
A. ADRs have caused medical problems, though they seldom lead to death
B. ADRs have very often caused patients to die in Canada
C. ADRs have caused many deaths in America over the past 30 years
D. it is easy to prevent ADRs from happening