Drug Allergy in Hospitalized Perioperative Patients: The Contribution of a Structured Questionnaire for Accurate Diagnosis

Abstract

History of drug allergy is a major cause for deviation from standard of care, as well as prescribing expensive medications. We aimed to evaluate drug allergy-related history taking by surgery interns and compare it with history taking by an allergist and an anesthetist using a simple, structured questionnaire. Patients with a declared drug allergy were prospectively recruited from surgical wards. The interns' drug allergy diagnosis was compared with that of the allergy specialist and anesthetist that used a structured questionnaire. A total of 195 patients with 305 reports of drug allergy were included; 52% of the reactions labeled by the surgical interns as allergic were tagged as not allergic by the anesthetist assisted by the questionnaire. The allergist found that 51% of these reactions represented either side effects or were nonrelated to the culprit drug. Inconsistency between drug allergy diagnosis of surgery interns and anesthetists and allergists are common. The use of a simple structured questionnaire by the ward physicians may be accessible and beneficial for more precise diagnosis of drug allergies.