Despite Drug Alerts, Doctors Keep Prescribing

February 2006

Did your doctor prescribe you a medication with a black-box warning? Even though the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stepped up efforts to highlight important drug guidelines with black-box warnings, dangerous drugs are still being prescribed.

According to a recent study of 324,548 outpatients who received at least one prescription, 33,778 patients were prescribed a medication that had a black-box warning, the FDA’s most severe warning.

Of those 33,778 prescriptions, the study found:

• 2,354 prescriptions were written in violation of a black-box warning.
• 90% of the violations involved patients who had a disease that the drug was not recommended to treat.
• 1,000 patients were taking existing medication that could have interacted with the black-box drug.

Researchers believe that if the FDA makes the warnings more reader-friendly then the number of medical errors will be reduced.

For more information about dangerous drugs, visit our Dangerous Drug and Recall Legal Center.

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