Medication errors are common, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that 10 percent to 15 percent of these errors are caused by drug-name confusion.
Confusing names
Trade names are chosen by pharmaceutical companies, but they must be approved by the FDA, which rejects about one third of the suggested names. On occasion, the FDA requires a name change for an approved trademarked name. For example, the agency ordered that "Omacor," a prescription fish-oil pill used to lower triglycerides, be renamed (as "Lovasa") because Omacor was thought to be too similar to Amicar, which is prescribed to stop the breakdown of blood clots.
Nonetheless, it is not surprising that 2 or more of the more than 9,000 generic names and 33,000 trademarked names for drugs might look similar on a hastily written prescription.
Take Zyrtec and Zantac; Zyrtec is an antihistamine prescribed for the treatment of various allergic reactions and conditions. Zantac is an antacid used to treat duodenal ulcers and to counter other gastric symptoms. In fact, a pharmacist is highly unlikely to dispense the wrong medication in this case because Zyrtec comes as 5- or 10-mg pills whereas Zantac pills range from 75- to 300-mg. By contrast, Omacor and Amicar, are dispensed as pills of similar sizes and may, therefore, be more difficult to distinguish from one another.
What can you do?
- Ask your physician to write the purpose of each medication on the prescription. Despite the much touted poor handwriting of most doctors, the pharmacist can easily discern the difference between "for allergic reaction" and "for duodenal ulcer."
- Ask your doctor to write down the generic name in addition to the trademark name. Cetirizine for Zyrtec and ranitidine for Zantac would certainly look entirely different on the prescription. That said, doctors often don't know the generic names for commonly used medications.
- As a final check, ask your doctor for the purpose of each prescription, and then make sure that what the pharmacist says about the medication's purpose coincides with what the doctor has told you.
