Articles related to Clinical Pharmacology

By capitalizing dissimilar letters, tall man writing helps distinguish between distinctive letter characters of similar medicine names that may be mistaken for one another. Since 2008, the ISMP has kept a list of medicine names in uppercase and bolded tall man letters. The organization surveyed 298 healthcare professionals between October and December 2022 to assist in updating the list, and the findings showed that tall man letters were frequently used: 74% of respondents consistently utilize tall man letters for organization-defined drug names in all necessary circumstances, and 80% of respondents said their facility employs tall man letters in all settings and across multiple facilities.

The approval was based on results from a 24-week open-label, two-part phase 3 trial that assessed Trikafta’s effectiveness and safety in 75 CF patients having at least one F508del mutation or a mutation known to be responsive to Trikafta. According to the findings, patients’ sweat chloride concentration and lung clearance index decreased in a clinically significant way. Trikafta therapy was typically well tolerated and commensurate with results seen in individuals who were older.

At the 2023 HIMSS meeting, Dr. Sandra Kane-Gill discussed a new alert system being developed at UPMC to improve care for patients at risk for drug-associated acute kidney injury (AKI). According to Dr. Kane-Gill, drugs are involved in approximately 30% of AKI cases in hospitalized patients, but imprecise alert systems mean that at-risk patients could be overlooked. To address this challenge, Dr. Kane-Gill led a consensus-building project to identify 20 drugs that are probably or definitely nephrotoxic with routine use. UPMC has developed a prototype alert tool for AKI that uses this list of nephrotoxic drugs to accurately detect AKI in patients. Preliminary results indicate that for every five alerts generated, there was one case of drug-associated AKI, a higher accuracy rate than for other alert systems. Dr. Kane-Gill plans to further refine the alert tool before deploying it in practice at UPMC and is also interested in using machine learning to prevent episodes of kidney injury.

A nonprofit group called the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) collaborates closely with healthcare professionals and institutions, regulatory bodies, trade associations, and the pharmaceutical industry to promote education regarding drug errors and their avoidance. Practitioners and patients who voluntarily report medication errors to the ISMP National Medication Errors Reporting Program (ISMP MERP) are subject to an impartial review by ISMP. Actual or probable errors that have been reported to ISMP are those that are displayed in the tables.

A pharmacy-driven COPD TOC service did not significantly reduce the 30-day re-presentation rate, according to this study. It did discover that a sizable proportion of patients with COPD exacerbation who were admitted might require an inhaler change, and it illustrates the value of this kind of TOC service for seeing and fixing medication-related issues particular to this disease state. The percentage of patients receiving the entire intended intervention had room for improvement.

Single-tablet regimen (STR) coverage under qualified health plans (QHPs) varies widely across the US. Although bictegravir/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide (BIC/FTC/TAF) coverage has grown over time, many QHPs in priority jurisdictions for the Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) have coinsurance requirements. Delay in QHP coverage and benefit design may hinder access to new antiretroviral treatment (ART) regimens.