Brenner S, Detz A, López A, Horton C, Sarkar U. Signal and noise: Applying a laboratory trigger tool to identify adverse drug events among primary care patients. BMJ Quality and Safety. 2012 21:670-675.
The extent of outpatient adverse drug events (ADEs) remains unclear and the value of using trigger tools to identify ADEs in outpatient populations, particularly chronically ill adults, is largley untested. The authors used six abnormal laboratory triggers for detecting ADEs among adults in outpatient care. They found that the trigger tool identified 91 (15 percent) ADEs.
