Adverse drug reactions causing admission to a paediatric hospital.

Objective(s): To obtain reliable information about the incidence of adverse drug reactions, and identify potential areas where intervention may reduce the burden of ill-health.

Design: Prospective observational study.

Setting: A large tertiary children's hospital providing general and specialty care in the UK.

Development and inter-rater reliability of the Liverpool adverse drug reaction causality assessment tool.

Aim: To develop and test a new adverse drug reaction (ADR) causality assessment tool (CAT).

Methods: A comparison between seven assessors of a new CAT, formulated by an expert focus group, compared with the Naranjo CAT in 80 cases from a prospective observational study and 37 published ADR case reports (819 causality assessments in total).

Main Outcome Measures: Utilisation of causality categories, measure of disagreements, inter-rater reliability (IRR).