130,000 deaths a year from doctor administered, properly prescribed prescription drugs is hard to believe. And I find it amazing that we never read about this in the media or see announcements (or more fittingly – warnings!) about it from the FDA. But it’s absolutely true and this figure is from a meta-analysis study that’s around 15 years old and based on 1994 data. The number now is probably much higher.
This study was published in the April 1998 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). An abstract is available on PubMed.
This study concluded that in 1994 – 2,711,000 people had serious ADR (adverse drug reactions) that required hospitalization. That’s 2 million, 711 thousand people suffering serious adverse reactions to properly prescribed FDA approved medication! Of these 2,711,000 people, as many as 137,000 died. And that’s just in the year 1994.
This study also concluded that FDA-approved prescription drugs are between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death in the United States.
Now, remember, this is from prescription drugs that were properly prescribed under a doctor’s care. This does not include improperly prescribed drugs, overdoses, drug abuse, or prescription mistakes.
The fact that this study was over 20 years ago and even more drugs are prescribed today than ever before, the number of deaths is surely much higher.
Is it just me or does the fact that taking prescription medication is the fourth leading cause of death seems just a little bit scary?
