Reliability of Adverse Drug Reaction Assessment in Psychiatric Inpatients

Abstract

Within an ongoing drug surveillance program in psychiatric hospitals, the applicability of an algorithm for judgment on probability of causal relationship of adverse events and drug therapy was tested. Algorithmic inter-rater agreement was compared to agreement obtained with the conventional criteria used so far within the program in 80 cases by two raters, who had participated in the drug surveillance program since its beginning in 1979. Agreement on total judgment was comparable to results from similar studies in the literature using various algorithms, but in contrast to all these studies a higher percent of agreement (80%) was obtained with the use of the conventional criteria in this study than with the use of the algorithm (69%). Possible explanations and consequences are discussed.