Pharmacosurveillance in hospitalized patients in Italy. Study design of the 'Gruppo Italiano di Farmacovigilanza Nell'Anziano' (GIFA)

The Italian Group of Pharmacoepidemiology in the Elderly (Gruppo Italiano d i Farmacovigilanza nell'Anziano, GIFA) is a collaborative pharmacosurveilla nce study in hospitalized patients, sponsored by the Italian National Resea rch Council (CNR) and the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics. It was founded in 1987 with the aim to constitute a multicentre research grou p to study quality of care and problems related to pharmacological therapy in the elderly. Until now the GIFA study has completed seven periodical sur veys and enrolled a total of 28,411 hospitalized patients in 83 clinical ce ntres. The database of the study contains approximately 174,000 in-hospital drug prescriptions, approximately 88,000 discharge diagnoses and a great d eal of data on topical geriatric items such as cognitive performance, disab ility, comorbidity, adverse drug reactions and incontinence. This paper des cribes the general organization and the methods of the GIFA study and shows in detail the type of data collected. (C) 1999 Academic Press.