These activities have hopefully reiterated the point that symptoms being treated could be an ADR of another drug. As we said earlier, the best way to become aware of the possibility of an ADR rather than a new condition is always to consider an ADR in your differential diagnosis. We now look at how you can try to decide if a presenting symptom might be an ADR perhaps before deciding on a Yellow Card Scheme report or a change in patient treatment.

As far as reporting is concerned, a suspicion is all that's needed. However, there are various ways you can try to decide if an ADR is the cause of a patient's symptoms.

All these factors would suggest causality. However, nothing is absolute and it is not always easy to predict. The important thing is to consider it and if a drug can be changed and symptoms may be related to the drug, it is sensible to consider the change.