Home > Use of analgesics in intentional drug overdose presentations to hospital before and after the withdrawal of distalgesic from the Irish market.

Corcoran, Paul and Reulbach, U and Keeley, HS and Perry, Ivan J and Hawton, K and Arensman, Ella (2010) Use of analgesics in intentional drug overdose presentations to hospital before and after the withdrawal of distalgesic from the Irish market. BMC Clinical Pharmacology, 18, (10), p. 6. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6904-10-6.

External website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20298551

BACKGROUND: Distalgesic, the prescription-only analgesic compound of paracetamol (325 mg) and dextropropoxyphene (32.5 mg) known as co-proxamol in the UK, was withdrawn from the Irish market as of January 2006. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of the withdrawal of distalgesic in terms of intentional drug overdose (IDO) presentations to hospital emergency departments (EDs) nationally.

METHODS: A total of 42,849 IDO presentations to 37 of the 40 hospitals EDs operating in Ireland in 2003-2008 were recorded according to standardised procedures. Data on sales of paracetamol-containing drugs to retail pharmacies for the period 1998-2008 were obtained from IMS Health.


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