Emergency Hospitalizations for Adverse Drug Events in Older Americans

Adverse drug events are important preventable causes of hospitalization in older adults. However, nationally representative data on adverse drug events that result in hospitalization in this population have been limited.

We used adverse-event data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance project (2007 through 2009) to estimate the frequency and rates of hospitalization after emergency department visits for adverse drug events in older adults and to assess the contribution of specific medications, including those identified as high-risk or potentially inappropriate by national quality measures.