Abstract

Anchu C.*, Bismi Bose, Shajitha V., Sneha Tom and Varsha Mathew

ABSTRACT

Pharmacovigilance is one of the important areas of health care system and also a new discipline in pharmaceutical industry. It is defined as “science and activities relating to detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other possible drug related problems”. The aim of pharmacovigilance is to enhance patient care and safety related with use of medicines. Adverse drug reaction (ADR) is defined as any response to a drug which is noxious and unintended and to which occurs at doses normally used in man for the prophylaxis, diagnosis or therapy of disease, or for the modification of physiological function. Studies shows that frequency and identification of ADR have been mainly reported in the departments like medical wards, geriatric department, surgery department, psychiatry department, pediatric department, ICU. ADR may influence all age groups mainly geriatrics and pediatrics. In India, study conducted among the inpatients of department of neurology. Neurology department includes antiepileptic, anti-psychotics, Parkinson’s disease etc. Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder in which nerve cell activity in the brain is disturbed causing seizures. Antipsychotics are drugs used to treat symptoms of psychosis such as hallucination, delusion, paranoia or confused thoughts. In clinical practice, psychotropic drugs are mostly prescribed. Psychosis commonly seen in Parkinson’s disease patients. In Parkinson’s disease patients, antipsychotics are mainly prescribed. The assessment of causality relationship is often highly subjective, based on an individual clinician’s assessment. Causality assessment is the method by which the extent of the relationship between a drug and a suspected reaction is estimated. Causality assessment can be done by using Naranjo’s algorithm, World Health Organization (WHO) causality assessment scale and Karch and Lasagna’s causality assessment scale.