Sociologists at the University of California, San Diego have found a 3196 percent increase in fatal domestic medication errors involving alcohol and/or street drugs. The recent death of actor Heath Ledger is an example of how dangerous it is for patients to monitor their own medications. 

This is the first large-scale study of home medication consumption. The study examines nearly 50 million U.S. death certificates from the years 1983 to 2004. There is focus on a subset of 200,000 deaths from medication errors. The study appears in the July 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, an official journal of the American Medical Association.

Principal author David P. Phillips a professor of sociology at UC San Diego says,”increasingly, people take their medications at home, away from hospitals and clinics. But most studies of fatal medication errors have focused on those clinical settings. We wanted to know three things: how many of these fatal errors happen at home; how many involve alcohol and/or street drugs; and are these numbers going up.” 

“The decades-long shift in the location of medication consumption from clinical to domestic settings is linked to a dramatic increase in fatal medication errors, “says the author.

Phillips and his co-authors, Gwendolyn E.C. Barker and Megan M. Eguchi, Both of UC San Diego, examined four types of fatal medication errors. Among the fatal errors, they note that there are astonishing differences based on where the errors occur and the particular combinations of drugs. 

Type 1 errors- These include deaths that occur at home from combining medications with alcohol and/or street drugs. The increase for fatal errors when medication was mixed with alcohol and/or street drugs was increased by 3196 percent. 

Type 2 errors- Domestic medication fatalities not involving alcohol and/or steet drugs in creased by 564 percent 

Type 3 errors- Non-domestic medication fatalities involving alcohol and/or street drugs increased by 555 percent. 

Type 4 errors- These errors, non-domestic fatal errors not involving alcohol and/or street drugs, show the smallest increase, just 5 percent, a sharp contrast to the type 1 errors. 

Sociologists say, “Domestic fatal medication errors, combined with alcohol and/or street drugs, have become an increasingly important health problem.” 

 Phillips says, “It also seems advisable to expand research on medication errors. Much of this research has focused on elderly patients and clinical settings. The percent findings suggest that more research should be devoted to middle-aged patents and domestic settings.” Other ways to help this issue are changes in policy and in clinical practice. 

This study was supported in part by a grant from the Marian E. Smith Foundation.

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