What You Should Know ...

• A study by David C. Classen, M.D. and colleagues at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, found that adverse drug reactions to medications prescribed by hospital staff members account for up to 140,000 deaths annually in the United States and cost more than $136 Billion. (Let's Live Vol 65 No 12, 1997)

• Timothy S. Lesar, Pharm. D., director of Albany Medical Center in New York, and colleagues detected 11,186 hospital drug-prescribing errors over a nine-year period. Significant prescription drug mistakes detected at the center increased from 522 in 1987 to 2,115 in 1995, according to Medical Tribune. (Let's Live Vol 65 No 12, 1997)

• Raymond Woosley, M.D., Ph.D. chairman of pharmacology at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington D.C., is quoted as saying that more than 40 percent of prescription errors lead to adverse side effects, including death (Let's Live Vol 65 No 12, 1997)

• According to a report by the Harvard Medical Practice Study Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 80,000 individuals die every year ---that's a person every 7 minutes. And, according to a 1993 report from the Harvard University Press, some 150,000 to 300,000 more were injured annually from medical negligence in hospitals.

• Antibiotics may not be the best way to treat ear infections. A study from the University of Pittsburgh found that children treated with Amoxicillin recovered no faster then children treated with a placebo, and the children treated with the antibiotics were even more likely to have recurring infections. (Journal of the American Medical Association December 18, 1991)

• Allergy injections were found to be of no benefit in a study of 121 allergic children with year-round asthma who were on appropriate treatment for their asthma. (New England Journal of Medicine January 30, 1997)

• Incorrectly prescribed medications claim more American lives than crime and car accidents combined, with an annual death toll estimated at more than 180,000 individuals per year. This estimated death toll is equivalent to three fully-loaded, wide-bodied jets crashing every other day.