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D. J. Chodos, MD
Kalamazoo, Mich

JAMA. 1975;231(13):1341.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

In an editorial in the JAMA (229:1908, 1974) Aagaard informed us that the "drug spotlight" was on digitalis. He reminded us that digitalis is a frequent cause of serious drug reaction. As a matter of fact, in a recent article by Burch¹ it was suggested that digitalis toxicity could be implicated in the death of 0.2% to 2% (possibly up to 8%) of all patients receiving digitalis.

Aagaard posed certain questions for the consideration of Pharmacy and Therapeutic Committees, presumably to be used in the evaluation of the therapeutic use of the drug by respective hospital staff members. These questions are asked, obviously, in an attempt to assure the appropriate use of digitalis preparations and to avoid unnecessary adverse effects. He would, however, appear to ignore the effect of recognized bioavailability differences among various digitalis products, particularly digoxin² (Fed Register Jan 22, 1974) and the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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