Journal of Research in Pharmacy Practice
Volume:2 Issue: 1, Jan-Mar 2013

Phamacoeconomics can aid the policy makers and the healthcare providers in decision making in evaluating the affordability of and access to rational drug use. Efficiency is a key concept of pharmacoeconomics, and various strategies are suggested for buying the greatest amount of benefits for a given resource use. Phamacoeconomic evaluation techniques such as cost minimization analysis, cost effectiveness analysis, cost benefit analysis, and cost utilization analysis, which support identification and quantification of cost of drugs, are conducted in a similar way, but vary in measurement of value of health benefits and outcomes. This article provides a brief overview about pharmacoeconomics, its utility with respect to the Indian pharmaceutical industry, and the expanding insurance system in India. Pharmacoeconomic evidences can be utilized to support decisions on licensing, pricing, reimbursement, and maintenance of formulary procedure of pharmaceuticals. For the insurance companies to give better facility at minimum cost, India must develop the platform for pharmacoeconomics with a validating methodology and appropriate training. The role of clinical pharmacists including PharmD graduates are expected to be more beneficial than the conventional pharmacists, as they will be able to apply the principles of economics in daily basis practice in community and hospital pharmacy.

Clinical pharmacy services are improving in hospitals. For assessing the impact of these services, first it is important to exactly describe them by categorizing into types, severity, resolution, and accuracy. The objective of this study is to provide a detailed analysis of the clinical pharmacists’ services performed on in‑patients in a teaching hospital during 28 months. Setting: Masih Daneshvari hospital, Tehran, Iran.

This is a descriptive study. The authors retrospectively reviewed the notes of all services and entered them in a designed SPSS sheet. Documentation was carried out based on the “findings, assessment, resolution, and monitoring” method. The data were descriptively analyzed. Main outcome measure: Types, subtypes, severities, resolutions, and accuracies of services were defined, documented, and analyzed.

In total 3152 records(2227 interventions and 925 visits with no intervention) were classified and analyzed in this study. Among all types of interventions, “improper medication use” (36.2%) was the most frequent intervention and among categories (subgroups) of “improper medication use,” “untreated indication” was the most frequent (23.7%). From the aspect of severity, 75.4% of interventions were estimated as of minor potential inconvenience to the patient (severity degree 1). Most interventions (78%) were finally recommended to the prescriber and 97.6% of interventions were considered accurate on further evaluation.

Clinical pharmacists’ interventions are highly demanded in the hospitals. Based on the results of this study, conditions needing medication to prevent later complications in the course of therapy are sometimes ignored, which emphasizes the positive role of the clinical pharmacists’ involvements in clinical teams to improve outcome.

Medication errors are the most common medical errors, which may result in some complications for patients. This study was carried out to investigate what influence medication errors by nurses from their viewpoint.

In this descriptive study, 150 nurses who were working in Qazvin Medical University teaching hospitals were selected by proportional random sampling, and data were collected by means of a researcher‑made questionnaire including demographic attributes (age, gender, working experience,…), and contributing factors in medication errors (in three categories including nurse‑related, management‑related, and environment‑related factors).

The mean age of the participant nurses was 30.7 ± 6.5 years. Most of them (87.1%) were female with a Bachelor of Sciences degree (86.7%) in nursing. The mean of their overtime working was 64.8 ± 38 h/month. The results showed that the nurse‑related factors are the most effective factors (55.44 ± 9.14) while the factors related to the management system (52.84 ± 11.24) and the ward environment (44.0 ± 10.89) are respectively less effective. The difference between these three groups was significant (P = 0.000). In each aforementioned category, the most effective factor on medication error (ranked from the most effective to the least effective) were as follow: The nurse’s inadequate attention (98.7%), the errors occurring in the transfer of medication orders from the patient’s file to kardex (96.6%) and the ward’s heavy workload (86.7%).

In this study nurse‑related factors were the most effective factors on medication errors, but nurses are one of the members of health‑care providing team, so their performance must be considered in the context of the health‑care system like work force condition, rules and regulations, drug manufacturing that might impact nurses performance, so it could not be possible to prevent medication errors without paying attention to our health‑care system in a holistic approach.

The aim of this study is to compare the effects of hypercapnic hyperventilation and normocapnic normoventilation on emergence time from propofol and isoflurane anesthesia.

In this clinical trial, the differences in emergence time were evaluated in 80 patients undergoing elective abdominal surgery in Alzahra University hospital, Isfahan, Iran, in 2011- 2012. Patients were randomly divided into four groups (groups 1-4) receiving isoflurane hypercapnic hyperventilation, isoflurane normocapnic normoventilation, propofol hypercapnic hyperventilation, and propofol normocapnic normoventilation, respectively. Hypercapnia was maintained by adding CO2 to the patient’s inspired gas during hyperventilation. The emergence time and the duration of stay in recovery room in the four groups were measured and compared by one‑way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and least significant difference tests.

The average emergence time in groups 1, 2, 3, and 4 were (11.3 ± 3.2), (15.2 ± 3.8), (9 ± 4.2) and (11.8 ± 5.3) min, respectively. These differences were significant (P = 0.001). In patients receiving propofol hypercapnic hyperventilation, the emergence time was faster than in other groups. There was also a significant difference in duration of stay in recovery room between the groups(P = 0.004). Patients who received isoflurane hypercapnic hyperventilation had a shortest length of stay in the recovery room.

The emergence time after intravenous anesthesia with propofol can be shortened significantly by using hyperventilation and hypercapnia, without any side effects.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of adding risperidone to the general behavioral treatment of masturbation in children 3‑7 years old.

A 4 week randomized clinical controlled trial was designed in year 2009. Samples have been chosen from children who have been referred to the Child and Adolescence Psychiatric Clinic of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Ninety children were recruited at the study and randomly allocated into the risperidone and control groups (44 and 46 respectively). The risperidone group was medicated simultaneously by behavioral treatments and 0.25‑1 mg of risperidone daily while the controls only received the behavioral treatments.

The mean ± SD age of the risperidone and control groups was 5.3 ± 1.1 and 4.9 ± 1.1 years, respectively. The mean ± SD of the period of suffering from masturbation was 3.4 ± 1.2 and 3.8 ± 1.7 months in the risperidone and the control groups, respectively. At the beginning of the study, the mean frequency of masturbation in control and the risperidone groups was 2.6 ± 0.9 and 2.7 ± 0.9 times/day, whereas after the 4th week, it decreased to 1.4 ± 0.6 and 1.1 ± 0.5 times/day, respectively. The results showed a more reduction in the mean frequency of masturbation in the risperidone group significantly.

In comparison to the general behavioral treatment, risperidone in addition to the behavioral treatment will probably reduce the frequency of masturbation in children more effectively.

Ibuprofen – a non‑steroidal anti‑inflammatory drug (NSAID)‑ and glucosamine sulfate – a natural compound and a food supplement‑ are two therapeutic agents which have been widely used for treatment of patients with temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders. This study was aimed to compare the effectiveness and safety of these two medications in the treatment of patients suffering fromTMJ disorders.

After obtaining informed consent, 60 patients were randomly allocated to two groups. Patients with painful TMJ,TMJ crepitation or limitation of mouth opening entered the study. Exclusion criteria were history of depressive disorders, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, kidney or liver dysfunction or diabetes mellitus, dental diseases needing ongoing treatment; taking aspirin or warfarin, or concomitant treatment of TMJ disorder with other agents or methods.Thirty patients were treated with ibuprofen 400 mg twice a day, (mean age 27.12 ± 10.83 years) and 30 patients (mean age 26.60 ± 10) were treated with glucosamine sulfate 1500 mg daily. Patients were visited 30, 60 and 90 days after starting the treatment, pain and mandibular opening were checked and compared within and between two groups.

Comparing with baseline measures, both groups had significantly improved post‑treatment pain (P < 0.0001 for both groups) and mandibular opening (P value: 0.001 for glucosamine sulfate and 0.03 for ibuprofen).Post treatment pain and mandibular opening showed significantly more improvement in the glucosamine treated patients (P < 0.0001 and 0.01 respectively).Rate of adverse events was significantly lower in the P value glucosamine sulfate group (P < 0.0001).

This investigation demonstrated that comparing with a commonly prescribed NSAID – ibuprofen‑, glucosamine sulfate is a more effective and safer therapeutic agent for treatment of patients with TMJ degenerative join disorder

Nearly two-third of the patients with type 2 diabetes have degrees of fatty liver; this may induce some side effects in them. This study aimed to find effect of salsalate on treatment of steatohepatitis and correlation of fatty liver with metabolic syndrome in the setting of impaired glucose metabolism.

In a double-blind randomized trial within two distinct groups, i.e., recently diagnosed diabetics and prediabetic cases allocated in two arms of the intervention to receive 3 g salsalate or placebo. All cases underwent glucose and lipid level studies and liver ultrasound study.

Out of 46 patients with diabetes, 34 (74%) had fatty liver in ultrasound; this ratio was 75% in 113 prediabetic cases. Relative frequency of fatty liver stages did not differ between diabetics and prediabetics. Within diabetics, mean aspartate aminotransferase (AST) level of fatty liver cases (23 ± 7 IU/dl) was higher than others (18 ± 3 IU/dl) (P < 0.05). Changes in transaminase levels following intervention did not significantly differ, comparing drug and placebo arms in two subgroups.

According to the findings, if diabetes could be assumed as the logical consequence of prediabetic state, it seems that fatty liver did develop before this preliminary status. In this study, salsalate could not change biochemical markers of fatty liver significantly.

To characterize adverse drug reactions (ADRs) reported by European (EU) consumer for antineoplastic and immunomodulating medications.

ADRs reported by consumers of antineoplastic and immunomodulating medications (anatomical therapeutic chemical [ATC]) group L from 2007 to 2011 and located in the EU ADR database, EudraVigilance, were analyzed. Data were categorized with respect to age and sex, category, and seriousness of reported ADRs and medications. The unit of analysis was one ADR.

We located 9649 ADRs reported for antineoplastic and immunomodulating medications, which approximately 15% of were serious, including 26 deaths. Less than 5% of ADRs were reported in children. Totally 73% of ADRs were reported for women and 27% for men. The majority of ADRs were of the type “general disorders and administration site conditions” (54% of total ADRs), followed by “skin and subcutaneous disorders” (7% of total ADRs), and “infections and infestations” (6% of total ADRs). Reports encompassed medicines from the therapeutic groups: Imunosupressants (ATC group L04) (90% of all ADRs), immunostimulants (ATC group L03) (6% of all ADRS), and antineoplastic agents (ATC group L01) (4% of all ADRs). Many ADRs were reported for etanercept (Enbrel®), Interferon beta (Betaferon®/Extavia®), and imatinib (Glivec®) with only few being serious.

In general, consumers reported a high number of ADRs from the use of antineoplastic and immunostimulant medications and many of these were classified as non‑serious. This indicates that consumers are interesting in reporting ADRs, but since the investigated substances potentially have the risk of causing many ADRs, we expected a higher number of serious ADRs.