title: [Problems of the number of cases in drug surveillance].
abstract: The purpose of drug surveillance studies is to ascribe the adverse event observed to a pharmacological cause and to try to evaluate its frequency in order to draw reliable conclusions. The present study shows that epidemiological investigations of the cohort or case-control type not only are of poor warning value but also require so many patients that the information required is obtained very slowly and at a very high cost. Despite its imperfections, spontaneous reporting seems to be the most effective method of post-marketing drug surveillance.
mesh_terms: D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D011358:Product Surveillance, Postmarketing / Q000379:methods*; D012107:Research Design; D012306:Risk; D013223:Statistics as Topic
vernacular_title: Problèmes d'effectifs en pharmacovigilance.