Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The epilepsy drug Lamictal looks and sounds too much like the anti-fungal pill Lamisil. So much so that at least 22 times, pharmacies have confused the names and dispensed the wrong drug — causing three people to suffer seizures, says the government’s third warning in as many years about the problem pair.
Mix-ups with look-alike or sound-alike drug names are a major source of medication-caused injuries and deaths. Now the Food and Drug Administration is pushing some eye-catching changes to try to stem confusion.
Expect the labels of more than 30 medications soon to list their names in a mix of uppercase, lowercase and different-colored letters. The hope is that putting, for example, the "-ictal" part of Lamictal in red italics will get pharmacists’ attention so they don’t grab the wrong bottle.
For the first time, FDA workers also are testing potential confusion about a new drug name before it hits the market. They scribble out fake prescriptions for 120 volunteer doctors, nurses and pharmacists to read. So far, confusion has caused about a third of the brand names manufacturers want to use to be rejected.
The changes are long overdue, say drug-safety experts.
"They’re getting away from blaming pharmacists, nurses, doctors and patients from not reading the names properly and making it easier for them to read it properly," says Michael Cohen of the nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices.
Yet, consumers still must protect themselves, he cautions, by checking their own prescriptions carefully and questioning the pharmacist.
More than 1,000 U.S. drugs have names so similar that health workers can get them confused. It’s easy to mistake a doctor’s scribble or blurry faxed prescription for the wrong drug, or for a hurried pharmacist faced with alphabetized bottles on a shelf to grab the wrong one.
The FDA’s pre-Christmas warning about Lamictal and Lamisil is just the latest example of a problem pair. Some others getting attention: Sarafem — the alias used to market Prozac for severe premenstrual symptoms — and Serophene, an infertility drug; the schizophrenia drug Zyprexa and the antihistamine Zyrtec; and the anti-depressant Serzone and anti-psychotic Seroquel.
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