Objective: The only few data on non hospital iatrogeny stress its frequency and its scarce recording. We can wonder if general practioners identify it in their medical records and if the data collected are sufficient enough to describe it.
Methods: This transversal descriptive study was done on a 35-month period among a network of 112 GPs who steadily collected data. They used a thesaurus of diagnosis with definitions, the Dictionnaire des Résultats de Consultation. In addition to the diagnosis of iatrogeny, the 15 variables studied focused on the following characteristics: doctors, patients, consultations, adverse reactions and treatments.
Results: At least one diagnosis of iatrogeny was found for 42% GPs, which gives an average of 17 iatrogenic cases in a year (0.81%). The 1,899 patients concerned presented 2,380 cases of iatrogeny and are women in majority (sex ratio: 0.7). The most common age bracket is the 50 to 59 years old persons. The most frequent adverse reactions are: gastroenterology (26.9%), neurology (14.6%) and finally dermatology (14.2%). The 1,762 treatments recorded concern the cardiovascular system (14.2%), the neurologic system (23.3%), and anti-infectious treatments (2.3%). The physicians are the ones who prescribed the suspicious treatments for two thirds of the cases and automedication counts for 1.7%.
Conclusion: One GP out of two collects iatrogeny. Thanks to the information contained in the structured computerized medical record, we are able to analyse it accurately. The final results match the data found in literature. The interdoctor variability opens the way to optimise the recording of iatrogeny with drug-monotoring centres.