FDA: Patients get prescriptions when they ask about advertised drugs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Request a medication, and a doctor usually hands over a prescription — half the time for a drug a patient sought after seeing it advertised, says a Food and Drug Administration survey of physicians.

Preliminary results of the FDA survey, released Monday, show doctors cited some benefits that accrue from the nation's barrage of drug advertising, such as patients learning about new treatments or asking more thoughtful questions about medication options.

But 59% of physicians said having seen a drug commercial added no benefit to a patient's subsequent doctor visit.

The same percentage of physicians recounted a patient's requesting a prescription for a brand-name drug because of an ad. Eight percent of doctors said they felt very pressured to prescribe what the patient wanted, and one in five felt somewhat pressured.

Only 40% of doctors believed their patients understood the possible risks and side effects of drugs based on ads.

Most of the time a patient requests a medication, he or she gets a prescription, said the FDA drug chief, Dr. Janet Woodcock. Of the 59% of physicians who recalled being asked for a specific brand-name product, about half prescribed that drug, she said.

Why didn't the other half? The main reason was the patient needed a different medication. Also cited were side effects that the patient initially was unaware of and the availability of less expensive alternatives, including over-the-counter options or even lifestyle changes such as diet.

How the drug industry advertises, and how strictly the FDA regulates those ads' truthfulness, are highly contentious issues. Just last month, congressional investigators announced that misleading ads often are off the air by the time FDA gets around to chastising their makers, and a critic charged that FDA warnings ordering untruthful ads to be pulled have dropped by almost two-thirds in the last year.

Direct-to-consumer drug advertising has tripled, to $2.7 billion worth a year, since the FDA loosened drug promotion rules in 1997. Drug makers argue the ads inform people about the latest treatments. Critics argue the ads too often make pills seem a panacea, and the most expensive drugs are advertised while cheaper, unadvertised ones might work better.

The FDA's survey of 500 physicians is to help the agency to understand better why doctors prescribe the way they do and whether some advertising rules need changing to ensure better public understanding of a drug's pros and cons.

A recent patient survey by the National Consumers League found ads can be important to alerting people to new therapies, and many patients use them only as starting points for more information because they realize ads are trying to sell drugs.

The FDA's findings that patients often are confused about drug risks suggests the government should require easier-to-understand side effect information on ads, said the league's president, Linda Golodner. She noted that magazine and newspaper ads often list all a drug's possible side effects in virtually unreadable, jargon-filled fine print.

"We believe that most evidence clearly shows that direct-to-consumer advertising plays a valuable role in educating consumers and prompting them to seek treatment," said Jeff Trewhitt of the industry's Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. He cited another survey estimating that ads have prompted 25 million Americans to initiate health discussions with their doctors.

The FDA survey has an error margin of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.