Sound-Alike Drug Names Increase the Risk of Medication Errors
Whether the drug names are Celexa and Celebrex, Losec and Lasix, or even Prilosec and Prozac, sound-alike drug names pose dangers to patients. Those dangers are compounded by the multi-ethnic and geographic diversity of the U.S. healthcare system, where strong accents combined with ordinary mispronunciation of complex pharmaceutical terms can lead to catastrophic outcomes if the wrong medication is accidentally dispensed. Medication errors and sound-alike drug names are the topics of a recent article featured on HealthDay News.
The article focuses on incidents such as a nurse's directive to dispense "fentanyl" and a hospital pharmacist's mistaken delivery of "sufentanil" -- a problem that arose as one patient prepared for an endoscopy. That patient was inadvertently given an opium-based painkiller approximately 10 times more potent than the one ordered by the physician, and wound up in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
The problems are also complicated by rapid pharmaceutical advances and continuing research that leads to the frequent addition of new (and longer) drug names to the pharmaceutical lexicon. As one psychiatrist reported, "As drugs proliferate, they start to sound alike, like Celexa and Celebrex... It's just going to get worse with increases in the number of drugs and in the number of unfamiliar names."
The article also focuses on drugs with names that are simply too long to manage, such as tarenflurbil -- the generic name for Flurizan, an Alzheimer's drug. Bapineuzumab, another investigational Alzheimer's medication is even more difficult.
Authors of the article report that nearly 1,500 different drugs have been implicated in medication errors resulting from medication names that looked or sounded alike, and those often-confused drugs add up to 3,170 pairs. According to the article, 1.4 percent of such errors in 2004 resulted in patient harm. Seven of them may have played a part in patients' deaths.
According to the article, the Nomenclature Expert Committee of the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) has been reviewing drug-name pronunciations since 2002 to help ensure consistency. Still, as another expert suggests, "Even if you were pronouncing something correctly, if you had a really deep Southern drawl, it's not going to sound the same. Or if you come in with an English accent or a French accent or a Texas accent, you may be pronouncing it correctly, but it's not going to sound the same."
If you have questions or concerns about the safety of a medication you have been prescribed, contact your physician or pharmacist immediately, and be open about your concerns. As this article illustrates, voicing those concerns could save your life.
Previously on the DC Metro Area Medical Malpractice Law Blog, we have posted articles related to:
- Evidence that the rate of home-based medication errors is increasing
- How medication errors add billions of dollars to U.S. healthcare costs
- Risky pharmacy practices that increase the rate of medication errors
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