Journal
LANCET
Volume 359, Issue 9309, Pages 853-854Publisher
LANCET LTD
DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(02)07923-0
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
To make informed decisions about taking medicinal drugs, people need accurate information about side-effects. A European Union guideline now recommends use of qualitative descriptions for five bands of risk, ranging from very rare (affecting <0.01% of the population), to very common (>10%). We did four studies of more than 750 people, whom we asked to estimate the probability of having a side-effect on the basis of qualitative and quantitative descriptions. Our results showed that qualitative descriptions led to gross overestimation of risk. Until further work is done on how patients taking the drugs interpret these terms, the terms should not be used in drug information leaflets.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available