Doctors often dismiss side effect complaints, patient survey says

This study focused on statins, but some physician experts say the findings likely apply to other medications.

By Kevin B. O'Reilly, AMNews staff. Oct. 1, 2007.

Physicians frequently miss the connection between their patients' symptoms and some well-known side effects of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, according to a new study based on reports from 650 patients.

When patients taking statins complained to their doctors about muscle weakness or pain, cognitive problems such as memory loss and other symptoms, physicians dismissed the possibility of adverse drug reactions nearly a third of the time, researchers concluded.

Slightly more than 60% of patients who complained about muscle-related reactions -- which are so common they are listed on package inserts -- said they felt their doctors did not appreciate the impact the symptoms had on their quality of life, said the report in the August Drug Safety, the peer-reviewed journal of the International Society of Pharmacovigilance.

The paper is an outgrowth of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine's larger study of statin side effects. Principal investigator Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD, said that because doctors often miss potential adverse drug reactions, a patient-based reporting system is needed to improve postmarket surveillance for all prescription drugs.

The phenomenon of physicians setting aside patient complaints is not unique to statins, she said, and may be an even greater problem with less-popular medicines whose side effects are not as widely known. In terms of physician awareness of adverse drug reactions, statins "could be the best-case scenario, because they are the best-selling drugs in the history of medicine," said Dr. Golomb, associate professor of medicine at UCSD.