In light of a hepatitis C virus outbreak that resulted in public health officials advising 40,000 patients to be tested, Dipak Desai, MD, majority owner of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, issued the following statement on March 10, 2008:
There was a "Wow!" moment during a new medication safety education program at a Florida hospital when central materials staff reported they didn't handle any drugs.
Most hospital pharmacy directors can only dream of having an integrated computer system in which doctors' prescriptions are automatically translated into a format that makes the pharmacist's job more efficient and easy.
Hospital pharmacies might expect a new antibiotic, dalbavancin, to be available soon, since the FDA sent Pfizer Inc. an approvable letter in late December 2007.
Hospital pharmacy directors will have another year of anticipating slow budget growth in drug costs due to the ongoing health care industry trends of focusing on reducing drug utilization, increasing generics, and the slowdown in new drug approvals by the FDA, drug budget experts say.
Drug Name Rivastigmine (Exelon®) transdermal patch and oral capsule
In a series of 354 elderly breast cancer patients treated with conservative surgery and tamoxifen but without axillary dissection or radiotherapy followed for 15 years, the cumulative incidence of developing axillary disease was 4.2%, and of developing local recurrence was 8.3%. Of the 354 subjects, 268 had died over the 15-year period, 17% of breast cancer and (83%) from causes other than breast cancer.
The prognostic importance of cytogenetics was evaluated in 200 adults between 15 and 65 years of age treated on a single ALL cooperative group protocol. Among the 140 having evaluable cytogenetic data, four risk categories were devised. Philadelphia chromosome positive t(9;22), unfavorable (monosomy 7, trisomy 8 or an 11q23 rearrangement), miscellaneous and normal. Overall survival of the miscellaneous group was similar to the normal karyotype patients whereas survival was considerably worse for both unfavorable and Ph + cytogenetic groups. The traditional adverse risk factors of older age and higher presenting white blood cell count were not associated with worse survival after adjusting for cytogenetics. In adult ALL, cytogenetics categories may be the strongest factor in predicting outcome.
