Monitoring and assessing the safety of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs: a West Midlands experience.

Background: Serious adverse events may occur from the use of disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. We describe preliminary data from a regional surveillance scheme. Our aims were to identify a broad range of potential adverse events, to identify deficiencies in care and examine the management of common events in order to improve care.