A coroner's inquest may be held into the deaths of 8 patients at the same hospital who had been prescribed the antireflux medication cisapride. The drug was withdrawn from the Canadian market in August 2000 (see CMAJ 2001; 165 [10]:1370).
Information about the deaths at the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in Burlington, Ont., emerged after a hospital pharmacist, Sana Sukkari, made a report to Health Canada about the cases last year. All 8 patients, who ranged in age from 54 to 84, were seriously ill and received treatment in the intensive care ward between June 1998 and March 2000. Treatment with cisapride was contraindicated in all cases.
Dr. Karen Acheson, regional coroner for Halton, is investigating the medical causes and circumstances surrounding the deaths in order to decide whether an inquest is warranted.
Cisapride was already at the centre of a coroner's inquest involving the death of 15-year-old Vanessa Young, an Ontario girl who died of a cardiac arrhythmia in March 2000. In that case, the coroner's jury made 14 recommendations aimed at improving Health Canada's drug-monitoring system. — CMAJ