Using prescription-event monitoring to determine whether erythromycin estolate was a more frequent cause of jaundice than erythromycin stearate. 100 patients were prescribed with one of the two drugs and were identified by prescribing practitioner. With the help of the questionnaires given to the patients, it was found 16 patients with jaundice. Among them four were attributable to gall stones, three to cancer, six to viral hepatitis and only three patients were due to an antibiotic. All three patients, in whom the antibiotic was a possible cause, had been treated with erythromycin stearate. No case was attributable to the estolate which has previously been suspected of being a more frequent cause of jaundice.
