Overdose from paracetamol, accidental or otherwise, brings around 90,000 people a year into accident and emergency units in the UK each year and about a half of these will be admitted to hospital. It is relatively easy to combine drugs for different ailments – for example cold cures and headache tablets – and overdose accidentally, and while the vast majority of overdoses are associated with self-harm, a proportion of severe paracetamol poisonings result from people taking too much from different marketed products. Paracetamol is the most common over-the-counter painkiller bought in the UK and around 30m prescriptions are issued every year.
Strict guidelines that were introduced 18 months ago following the death of a young woman have transformed the way paracetamol overdoses are managed, including the introduction of the lowest threshold for antidote treatment anywhere in the world.īut at what cost? We carried out the first analysis of the impact of these changes and our study, published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, suggests that for every life saved, another 31,000 patients will be unnecessarily treated – and put at risk of serious side effects – at a cost of £17.4m.
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