Pharmacovigilance: Present Scenario and Future Goals
Melon Pharmacovigilance is the science and activity relating to the collection, detection, assessment, monitoring, and prevention of adverse effects with pharmaceutical products. Pharmacovigilance basically targets safety of medicine. Pharmacists have crucial role in health systems to maintain the rational and safe use of medicine for they are drug experts who are specifically trained in this field. The perspective of pharmacy students on pharmacovigilance and ADR reporting has also been discussed with an aim to highlight the need to improve content related to ADR reporting and pharmacovigilance in undergraduate pharmacy curriculum. Globally, although the role of pharmacists within national pharmacovigilance systems varies, it is very well recognized. Incorporation of ADR reporting concepts in education curriculum, training of pharmacists and voluntary participation of pharmacists in ADR reporting is very crucial in achieving the safety goals and safeguarding public health. Also, these knowledge gaps can be fulfilled through continuous professional development programs and reinforcing theoretical and practical knowledge in undergraduate pharmacy curriculums. Without adequately identifying and fulfilling training needs of pharmacists and other health care professionals, the efficiency of national pharmacovigilance systems is unlikely to improve which may compromise patient’s safety.
Patient Safety: A Nobody’s Concern
Patient safety is a global concern and is the most important domains of health-care quality. Medical error is a major patient safety concern, causing increase in health-care cost due to mortality, morbidity, or prolonged hospital stay. A definition for patient safety has emerged from the health care quality movement that is equally abstract, with various approaches to the more concrete essential components. Patient safety was defined by the IOM as “the prevention of harm to patients.” Emphasis is placed on the system of care delivery that prevents errors; learns from the errors that do occur; and is built on a culture of safety that involves health care professionals, organizations, and patients. Patient safety culture is a complex phenomenon. Patient safety culture assessments, required by international accreditation organizations, allow healthcare organizations to obtain a clear view of the patient safety aspects requiring urgent attention, identify the strengths and weaknesses of their safety culture, help care giving units identify their existing patient safety problems, and benchmark their scores with other hospitals.
Patient Problem Solving and Preventive Care
Medications are powerful tools that, if used correctly, can prevent or treat disease. If used incorrectly, there is potential to cause great harm to people who take them. These unintended effects, called adverse effects, can occur from any medication. As health care teams, which include physicians, pharmacists, and other health care providers, are making decisions about using specific medications to treat an individual patient, they must weigh the potential risks against the desired benefit of each medication to minimize the chance of harm to the patient. As important members of the health care team, pharmacists work collaboratively with patients’ other health care providers in all types of patient care settings ranging from community pharmacies to hospitals and long-term care facilities. Across these settings, pharmacists take specific actions that regularly contribute to improving patient safety. In addition to training on medications, pharmacist education and training includes assessing health status of patients, providing education and counseling, managing diseases, and using health care technologies. Pharmacists use this education and training to prevent medication errors, drug interactions, and other adverse medication events from reaching patients. With the expanding number and complexity of medications, pharmacists’ roles and responsibilities have expanded broadly beyond medication distribution. Pharmacists are providing patient care in almost all health care settings to help people of all ages get the most from the medications that are prescribed to them. Examples of pharmacists’ patient care services include providing health and wellness screenings, managing chronic diseases, assisting patients with medication management, administering immunizations, and working with hospitals and health systems to improve patient care and reduce the number of patients who are readmitted to the hospital following their hospital stay.
Framework for Patient Safety
Medication errors are common in general practice and in hospitals. Both errors in the act of writing (prescription/dispensing/administration errors) and prescribing faults due to erroneous medical decisions can result in harm to patients. Any step in the prescribing process can generate errors. Slips, lapses, or mistakes are sources of errors, as in unintended omissions in the transcription of drugs. Faults in dose selection, omitted transcription, and poor handwriting are common. Inadequate knowledge or competence and incomplete information about clinical characteristics and previous treatment of individual patients can result in prescribing faults, including the use of potentially inappropriate medications. An unsafe working environment, complex or undefined procedures, and inadequate communication among health-care personnel, particularly between doctors and nurses, have been identified as important underlying factors that contribute to prescription errors and prescribing faults. Active interventions aimed at reducing prescription errors and prescribing faults are strongly recommended. These should be focused on the education and training of prescribers and the use of on-line aids. The complexity of the prescribing procedure should be reduced by introducing automated systems or uniform prescribing charts, in order to avoid transcription and omission errors. Feedback control systems and immediate review of prescriptions, which can be performed with the assistance of a hospital pharmacist, are also helpful. Audits should be performed periodically.
ARTS AND SCIENCE OF PRESCRIBING
Prescribing patient is a mammoth task. It is recommended that healthcare professionals who prescribe medications exercise critical thinking skills to ensure the safe and effective use of therapeutic agents. It should be endowed with communication skills, diagnostic skills, knowledge of medicines, an understanding of the principles of clinical methodology, consecutive risk and uncertainty. In fact, clinicians prescribe in varied situations, often in the absence of patient, and rational prescribing decisions must be based on knowledge interpreted in the light of many other factors. Purpose of the study: Discussion and projection of drug prescribing among patients of both acute and chronic care. The pharmacists have a vital role to play which is thoroughly discussed. Findings: Prescribing is not just a piece giving patient a piece of paper and advising him to follow instructions. Many factors and necessary considerations are lying beneath. Materials and Methods: Research conducted a comprehensive year-round literature search, which included books, technical newsletters, newspapers, journals, and many other sources. Medicine and technical experts, pharma company executives and representatives were interviewed. Projections were based on estimates such as drug end users, providers or prescribers, general theories of rational use, implication and types of different prescribing methods. Research limitations: Very few articles found in matters regarding along with a very less interest paid by general people to talk about medicine use, prescription, pharmacists in counseling therapy, ADRs and their management. It was very difficult to bring out facts of irrational prescribing or different prescribing policy by the providers cause prescription holding patients rarely co-operates in this. Practical Implication: A good prescribing is the soul of patient compliance and safety along with well-being after a period of illness. Along with students, researchers and professionals of different background and disciplines, e.g. Pharmacists, doctors, nurses, hospital authorities, public representatives, policy makers and regulatory…
Content Analysis of Television Food Advertisements Aimed at Children: Case Study of Lagos and Ibadan
Advertisement is one of the major components of the food environment which influences in childhood food choices. This study was conducted to analyze the content of food advertisements aimed at children in Lagos and Ibadan, Nigeria. Advertisement samples which were aired between March 2016 to April 2016 were collected from six television stations. A total of 58 advertisments aimed at children were coded and analysed thematically. Beverages, fruit drinks and soft drinks were the most frequently advertised (32.8%). Butter and margarine had the highest mean duration of time spent for advertisement (47.00± 22.91 seconds), while the mean time for all the advertisement was 34.72±14.05 seconds. Although 82.8% of the advertisements had a slogan, about half of them (48.3%) carried no nutrition message.
Epidemiological Profile and Histopathological Aspects of Malignant Tumors of Testicle in Yaounde and Douala (Cameroon)
Objective: Determine the epidemiological profile and histopathological aspects of testicular cancer in the two major cities of Cameroon, Yaoundé and Douala. Patients and methods: It was a retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study conducted in the reference structures approved for anatomopathological examination in Yaoundé and Douala. The study was conducted over a 17-year period (2001-2017). We included all cases of histologically confirmed testicular tumors. Variables included frequency, year of diagnosis, sociodemographic data, clinical aspects, types of sampling, gross macroscopy, and histological types. Results: We collected 81 cases of testicular tumors (49 benign tumors and 32 malignant tumors), with a mean age of diagnosis of 36.27 ± 18.9 years. For malignant tumors, the mean age was 40.25 ± 25.02 years, the predominant age group was 20-29 years (25%), the predominant type of specimen was the orchidectomy %, the predominant histological types were germ cell tumors with 30% seminomas. Conclusion: Testicular tumoral pathology affects more young man and is dominated by seminoma-type germ tumors.
Primary lymphoma of bone, myeloma mimicker: a case report and review of literature
Primary lymphoma of the bone (PLB) primarily arising from the medullary cavity is an extremely rare entity, with only limited number of studies and sporadic cases reported in the literature. The current study presents one case of PLB presented with unique presentation and treated with chemotherapy only. A 66 year old male presented with severe pain in the left hip that persisted for two months. Initial laboratory work up showed anemia, hypercalcemia and increase in free light chains kappa to lambda ratio, a diagnosis of multiple myeloma was suspected, magnetic reso¬nance imaging of the vertebral spine extensive involvement of bone marrow of the vertebrae. An 18F fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography computed tomography (FDG PET CT) scan showed widely scattered moderate to intense uptake in multiple lytic of skeleton, Impression was : Image compatible with extensive multiple myeloma, No extra osseous involvement was found. Bone marrow examination was performed confirmed a diagnosis of extensive bone marrow involvement by High grade B-cell neoplasm with areas of bone marrow necrosis. The patient received six cycles of R-CHOP regimen (Rituximab, cyclo-phosphamide, Anthracycline, vincristine and prednisone) and achieved a complete response, as confirmed by FDG PET CT. At present, the patient is in a good condi¬tion.so this patient presentation mimicking multiple myeloma, which represent diagnostic dilemma. Primary lymphoma of the bone is rare disease entity, there is no strong evidence supporting some diagnostic and therapeutic decisions, and therefore, case presentation of the rare disease may facilitate treatment of similar diseases. A review of the literature to elucidate the clinical, radiological, pathological phenotype and optimal treatment of PLB done.
Treatment and Prevention of Urolithiasis in patients with stones of various locations
The study goal was to find the most optimal approach to the treatment of patients with urolithiasis. The study involved 4014 patients with stones of different localization. Patients with benign prostatic hyperplas-ia (BPH) were investigated with IPSS, PSA, and uroflowmetry. 3175 ureteropyeloscopies were performed. Separately, we studied the results of treatment of 427 patients with ureterolithiasis in combination with BPH, which underwent ureterolithotripsy. Percutaneous nephrolithotrip-sy was performed in 412 patients, most of the procedures were per-formed according to the classical technique. The other research purpose was prophylaxis optimization of the recurrent urolithiasis. 152 patients participated in the experimental part. Some of the patients were taken from the clinical part of the study. All patients were with recurrent calci-um oxalate urolithiasis. Patients were divided into two groups: the 1st group (74 patients) did not receive treatment during the follow-up peri-od, the second group (42 patients) received treatment in the volume of thiazide diuretics, water load, citrate mixtures, calcium preparations in-side. During the entire follow-up (6 months), all patients underwent a comprehensive urological examination. Eventually have been estimated that surgery should not be the final stage of treatment of the urolithiasis. Urolithiasis requires constant monitoring of patients, and the priority task of a urologist is to prevent recurrent stone formation. This is achieved through the appointment of adequate conservative therapy, which includes thiazide diuretics, citrate mixtures, calcium preparations, water intake in adequate amount, and if necessary, magnesium prepara-tions. The final choice of conservative treatment depends on the type of stone. The change in the concentration of crystallization inhibitors (biku-nin and osteopontin) is a predictor of an early relapse of the urolithiasis, which can be used in monitoring patients in the postoperative period.
The transurethral resection of the Prostate (TURP) syndrome and acute dilutional hyponatraemia (HN): A comprehensive literature review from first incidence in 1947 to disappearance in 2018
Introduction and objective: To report on the literature review on the TURP syndrome from its first report in 1947 to disappearance from urology in 2018 Material and methods: The literature on the TURP syndrome from 1947 to 2018 was reviewed. We summarise the evidence on its incidence, prevalence, patho-aetiology, clinical picture and management. With the introduction of normal saline as irrigating fluid for the TURP procedure, the TURP syndrome as characterised with hyponatraemia (HN) has been eradicated. We introduce the concept of volumetric overload shocks (VOS) to be prepared when another syndrome induced by saline overload strikes. Results: The TURP syndrome is induced by massive absorption of the sodium-free irrigating fluid and is characterized with acute dilutional HN- hence it is eradicated with use of saline as irrigant. It presents with shock and multiple vital organ dysfunction and was easily mistaken for one of the recognised shocks calling for further volume expansion with isotonic solutions with disastrous consequences. Identifying the concept of VOS does not only help in the management of the TURP syndrome but also with recognizing the syndrome induced by saline overload. Hypertonic sodium therapy has proved effective in treatment. Conclusion: The review demonstrates that VOS in clinical practice is of two types; Type 1 (VOS1) induced by sodium-free fluid and type 2 (VOS2) induced by sodium-based fluids- the later has no serum marker of HN. Both conditions present with multi-system organ dysfunction but one system may predominate. VOS2 presents as the adult respiratory distress syndrome.