Incidence, causes, and consequences of preventable adverse drug reactions occurring in inpatients: A systematic review of systematic reviews

The method of event detection appeared to significantly influence PADR incidence, with prospective methods having the highest reported PADR rate. This finding is in agreement with the background literature. High methodological and statistical heterogeneity across primary studies evaluating adverse drug events reduces the validity of the overall PADR incidence derived from the meta-analyses of the pooled data. Data pooled from studies using only prospective methods of event detection should provide an overall estimate closest to the true PADR incidence; however, our estimate should be considered with caution due to the statistical heterogeneity found in this group of studies. Future studies should employ prospective methods of detection. This review demonstrates that the true overall incidence of PADRs is likely much greater than the overall pooled incidence estimate of 0.59 PADRs per 100 patients obtained when event detection method was not taken into consideration.