Abstract

SOUSA-PINTO, Bernardo; PEREIRA, Ana Margarida  and  FONSECA, João Almeida. Impact of drug allergy diagnosis. Rev Port Imunoalergologia [online]. 2017, vol.25, n.4, pp.249-258. ISSN 0871-9721.

Drug allergy overdiagnosis is a frequently reported phenomenon for multiple drug classes. It might be, at least partially, due to difficulties in performing a diffferential diagnosis with other conditions with similar clinical presentations (such as infectious exanthemas), and also due to a insufficiency in performing confirmatory tests. Nevertheless, labelling a patient as having a “drug allergy” is not innocuous - recent studies have shown that this label associates with worse clinical outcomes and with a negative economic impact on health systems. Therefore, this study aims to discuss the most relevant findings regarding the clinical and economic impacts of “drug allergy” label, taking into account some of the most important drug classes

Keywords : Cost-effectiveness; diagnosis; drug allergy; drug hypersensitivity; health impact assessment.

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