This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Patient Safety/ Medical Error  • Adverse Effects  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In reply

We concur with Dr Falliers that corticosteroid-related adverse events are very important clinically. Our analysis of medication-related malpractice claims included 4 claims (or 3% of all claims) involving corticosteroids. These claims consisted of 2 patients with osteonecrosis, 1 claim associated with adrenal insufficiency due to corticosteroid withdrawal, and 1 claim associated with the development of a cushingoid syndrome in a child following a 20-fold overdose of a long-acting glucocorticoid injection.

While providing additional perspective, malpractice claims represent a very small portion of the problem of serious and often preventable adverse drug events.¹ While we cannot determine if the number of corticosteroid-related malpractice claims in our study is consistent with the experience in other parts of the country, we share Dr Falliers' concern regarding preventable adverse drug events due to corticosteroid prescribing.

Corticosteroids, especially long-term and high-dose therapy, may result in significant morbidity including osteonecrosis.² Recent advances in the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Malpractice Claims Regarding Corticosteroids
Constantine John Falliers
Arch Intern Med. 2003;163(9):1112-1113.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Analysis of Medication-Related Malpractice Claims: Causes, Preventability, and Costs
Jeffrey M. Rothschild, Frank A. Federico, Tejal K. Gandhi, Rainu Kaushal, Deborah H. Williams, and David W. Bates
Arch Intern Med. 2002;162(21):2414-2420.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Does paracetamol cause hypertension?
Montgomery
BMJ 2008;336:1190-1191.
FULL TEXT