Supratherapeutic Dosing of Acetaminophen in Iranian Hospitalized Adult Patients

Authors

  • Atefeh Behboudifar Department of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
  • Bita Dadpour Department of Medical Toxicology, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
  • Fereshte Sheybani Department of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran, ;Clinical Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
  • HamidReza Naderi Department of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
  • Javad Rashid Department of Statistics and Health Information System, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
  • Masoumeh Hoseini Department of Statistics and Health Information System, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
  • Nasrin Khosravi Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
  • Negar Morovatdar Clinical Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
Abstract:

Background: Acetaminophen is the most commonly used analgesic and fever-lowering agent that is prescribed in a high percentage of patients. Due to the high prevalence of the administration of this drug, even a small percentage of errors in prescription can be significant and have important implications. The aim of the present study was to determine the frequency of supratherapeutic dosing of acetaminophen among hospitalized adult patients and its association with clinical outcomes. Methods and Materials: We conducted a retrospective, cross sectional study of all hospitalized adult patients in a teaching hospital affiliated to Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. Results: During the three-month study period, 4,781 (24.83%) out of 19,252 hospitalized cases received acetaminophen. Of those who received acetaminophen, 264 (5.5%) cases received a supratherapeutic dose at least once. Of 611 incidences of supratherapeutic dosing, 99.1% occurred in surgical wards and surgical intensive care units (ICUs), and 98.8% was associated with receiving parenteral formulations of acetaminophen. Multivariate analysis indicated supratherapeutic dosing of acetaminophen was significantly associated with multiple factors including female gender, older age, and longer length of hospital stays. Conclusion: All things considered, the percentage of hospitalized adult patients who received any dose of acetaminophen at our center was considerably less than other countries. Despite this, the frequency of instances of supratherapeutic dosing of this medication was significant (i.e. 17.6 days per 1,000 patient-days). Considering recent reports concerning the risk of hepatotoxicity associated with the repeated use of supratherapeutic doses of acetaminophen, continuous monitoring of acetaminophen utilization in order to prevent these instances is needed. Furthermore, based on the low percentage of patients who receive acetaminophen at our center, conducting research to study the pattern of prescription of analgesics and antipyretics in our center and its association with clinical outcome is logical.

Upgrade to premium to download articles

Sign up to access the full text

Already have an account?login

similar resources

Supratherapeutic dosing of acetaminophen among hospitalized patients.

BACKGROUND We investigated acetaminophen use and identify factors contributing to supratherapeutic dosing of acetaminophen in hospitalized patients. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed the electronic health records of adult patients who were admitted to 2 academic tertiary care hospitals (hospital A amd hospital B) from June 1, 2010, to August 31, 2010, and who received acetaminophen during t...

full text

Knowledge of Iranian general practitioners for acetaminophen dosing in children.

OBJECTIVE This study aims to explore the knowledge of a randomly selected cohort of Iranian general practitioners (GPs) on the topic of acetaminophen dosing for fever in children. METHODS In this cross-sectional study, which was conducted in March 2011 in Isfahan (Iran) 515 GPs who were practicing general family medicine were sent a self-administered 10-item questionnaire about the usage of a...

full text

Repeated Supratherapeutic Acetaminophen (paracetamol) Use Resulting in a Fatality

In the United States acetaminophen (paracetamol) is the most commonly used nonprescription analgesic. In addition to its nonprescription use, acetaminophen is also a common ingredient of prescription opioid combination products. This case report describes an acetaminophen-related fatality that occurred as a consequence of an unintentional overdose of a prescribed hydrocodone/acetaminophen produ...

full text

Acetaminophen Analysis in Different Commercial Formulation of Iranian Acetaminophen Tablets

Acetaminophen is one of the most important antipyretic and analgesic drugs. It has an excellent efficacy when it's used in therapeutic doses, but in unsafe doses it can be resulted in hepatotoxicity and permanent liver failure. Due to disparities that have been reported between the actual and stated concentration of acetaminophen tablets, we aimed to compare the actual quantity of 8 Iranian gen...

full text

Respiratory Complications in Iranian Hospitalized Patients with HIV/AIDS

BACKGROUND The respiratory tract has been the most commonly affected site of illness in HIV-infected patients. The current study was done to identify the frequency of respiratory complications in a consecutive case series of HIV-positive patients in Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS This study was a retrospective analysis at the national academic reference medical center of Imam-Khomeini Hospital, ...

full text

Carboplatin Dosing for Adult Japanese Patients

Carboplatin is a platinum-based anticancer drug that has been long used to treat many types of solid cancer. Because the clearance of carboplatin strongly correlates with the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), its dosage is calculated with the Calvert formula on the basis of the patient's GFR to achieve the target area under the plasma drug concentration-time curve (AUC) for each patient. Howeve...

full text

My Resources

Save resource for easier access later

Save to my library Already added to my library

{@ msg_add @}


Journal title

volume 15  issue 2

pages  83- 90

publication date 2019-04-01

By following a journal you will be notified via email when a new issue of this journal is published.

Hosted on Doprax cloud platform doprax.com

copyright © 2015-2023