Search Strategies
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In the first series, we searched a classified card index for entries for contraception, dental deaths, drug therapy, operations plus anaesthesia, drug idiosyn-crasy, mischance, accident, misadventure and medical mishap.
SEARCH STRATEGIES
In
the first series, we searched a classified card index for entries for
contraception, dental deaths, drug therapy, operations plus anaesthesia, drug
idiosyn-crasy, mischance, accident, misadventure and medical mishap. We did not
include deaths due to anaesthetic technique in the search.
In
the second series, a computer database, which held an index of cases since 1995
was used, in addi-tion to the classified card index. We searched the database
using the terms ‘therapeutic/accident’, ‘ther-apeutic/misadventure’, ‘medical
mishap’ and ‘medical misadventure’.
For
this current series, we hand searched the Coroner’s determination, i.e. the
official recording of the facts and verdict, to identify any deaths that
mentioned a drug in the case description, the cause of death or the Coroner’s
verdict. We excluded cases in which illegal drugs were used and where the
patient had taken a deliberate overdose of a drug, as in previ-ous periods. We
also excluded cases where an open verdict was returned.
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