Back Matter - Addendum 3. The Name of Medicines: LASA Medicines

In this appendix, we discuss about the possibility of confusing different drugs with each other, especially in the dispensing phase in pharmacies and hospital wards, with regard to emergency units.This possibility in mostly related to those medicines called LASA (look alike/sound alike). Attention to these drugs arose, in the first instance, from the visual or acoustic similarities that can be found in the names (e.g. names of drugs with the same prefix or suffix; names of drugs with a common root; the sound of the name of a drug that can be confused with that of another drug), but immediately afterwards, interest was extended to all the elements that make up the drug’s labelling, starting with the dosage, and ending with the overall graphics of the packaging.