Have you ever had a side effect of a prescription drug? I have seen too many –some very sad.

The worst case I ever saw was back in school. As a 3rd year medical student in an intensive care rotation, I inherited a young black girl from the farm country outside of Tampa who had been in ICU for months. Her side effect? I’ll spare you the gore but in short, her skin had fallen off.

She had developed a cough, a doctor gave her an antibiotic and she had a reaction to it called Stevens-Johnson syndrome. It’s an uncommon but violent side effect of many different drugs. It causes body-wide swelling and sloughing off of your skin and mucous membranes. This poor girl never made it out of ICU. It’s always tough to witness dying. It’s even tougher when you’re as green as I was then.

The point in telling you this story involves another tragedy (beside the fact that most people don’t need an antibiotic to treat a cough.) The attending physician wrote “multi-organ failure” as the cause of death. It was never tracked as a prescription drug induced death. If it’s not reported as such, no one has to account for it and nothing is done to prevent it from happening again.

Just the Other Day….

“Doctor, I get muscle pain so bad I can hardly get out of bed in the morning… I feel like I’m 90 years old. I’m so tired all the time that I’m giving up the things I really love to do. I just can’t do anything anymore.”

I told him “These symptoms are side effects of that Lipitor you’re taking.”

“You’re kidding me!” He replied, “Dr. Sears, I tried telling my last doctor that, but he said no.”

All too often, a patient’s report of drug side effects falls on deaf ears. In today’s Health Alert, I’ll show you how you use the Adverse Event Reporting Program to have a voice against the dangers of medications.

The Casualties

Every year 2 million people have severe reactions to prescription drugs. According to the American Medical Association, these adverse reactions claim more 100,000 lives per year.(1) A study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that 25% of patients suffered noticeable side effects from the 3.34 billion prescriptions filled in 2002.(2)

Become Part of the Solution

If you’ve suffered because of your medications, it’s important to report it. For decades, the FDA has failed to protect us from unnecessary, unproven and in many cases dangerous drugs.

You can begin to do something about this problem. You can report side effects right here on my website. On the home page, click on "Report Side Effects."

It will take you to a special adverse event reporting page I have set up for you. You will be able to tell me your side effects and become part of one of our research projects.

To Your Good Health,

Al Sears, MD

1 Lazarou J, Pomeranz B, Corey P. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients. JAMA. 1998;279:1200-1205.

2 Gandhi TK, Weingart SN, Borus J, Seger AC, Peterson J, Burdick E, Seger DL, Shu K, Federico F, Leape LL, Bates DW. Adverse drug events in ambulatory care. N Engl J Med. 2003 Apr 17;348(16):1556-64.