27 Jun
Speaker: Joel Gallant, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Department of Infectious Disease, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore.
A tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) (Viread®, Gilead)-based regimen has proved to be as effective in maintaining undetectable levels of HIV RNA as a medication stavudine (d4T) (Zerit canadian, Bristol Myers Squibb)-based regimen in treatment-naive, HIV-infected patients, while providing more favorable lipid and mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) profiles with fewer nucleoside-associated adverse effects.
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26 Jun
Speaker: Jan Gerstoft, MD, Senior Consultant, Rigs Hospi-talet, Copenhagen, Denmark.
A 48-week trial on the efficacy and safety data is the first head-to-head study of ritonavir (Novir medication, Abbott)-boosted protease inhibitor (PI) therapy in treatment-experienced patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Results indicated that saquinavir (Fortovase®, Roche)/ritonavir reduced HIV levels to less than 50 copies per milliliter in a greater proportion of treatment-experienced, HIV-infected patients, had a better safety profile, and had a better lipid profile than those taking indinavir (Crixivan drug, Merck).
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25 Jun
Once-Daily Short-Duration Antimicrobial Therapy for Community-Acquired Pneumonia
Speaker: John Pullman, MD, Infectious Diseases Specialist, Internal Medicine, Mercury Medical Center, Butte, Montana.
Telithromycin (Ketek™, Aventis), administered once daily for five to ten days to patients with CAP, has been found to be as effective and safe as standard twice-daily, 10-day treatment with clarithromycin (Biaxin tablet, Abbott), a commonly prescribed macrolide; this suggests that in an environment of increasing macrolide resistance, telithromycin might be an effective alternative for the treatment of patients with CAP.
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24 Jun
How are you doing?” I cautiously asked.
“Pretty bad,” he sarcastically answered. “How would you be doing if your body was full of cancer and your doctors told you there was nothing they could do?”
It was a typical answer from him and I immediately regretted asking the question. “Is that really what your oncologist told you?” I asked.
“I don’t have to tell you how doctors are,” he angrily continued. “Of course he used big words and acted like the stupid treatments are helping. But look at me. He must think I’m an idiot. Do I look like someone who is getting better? At the end of every visit he reminds me that I have a very serious condition and he can’t cure me. He told me I should get my affairs in order. Does that answer your question: ‘How am I doing?’”
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23 Jun
Generic versions of Prozac (fluoxetine) have been available to patients for approximately 18 months, and a court decision is expected this month on whether generic Paxil (paroxetine hydrochloride) may be marketed. Yet in the face of this, several SSRI brands have increased HMO drug formulary access.
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22 Jun
The plight of 17-year-old Jesica San-tillan, the young girl who received the wrong blood type in a transplant operation at Duke University Medical Center last month, transfixed the country and once again focused national attention on a serious problem that continues to plague U.S. medicine: medical mistakes. The botched operation is yet another reminder of the 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which produced shock waves with its rough estimate that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year because of medical errors. The biggest problem area, however, was not blood transfusions but medication mistakes.
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21 Jun
The critical issues of medical errors and patient safety have received a great deal of attention since a report issued in November 1999 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) suggested that as many as 98,000 patients die each year as the result of medical errors in hospitals. The Center for Advancement of Patient Safety has reported that many of the errors made in hospitals are caused by incorrect administration of medications. In 2001, more than order-entry program can eliminate problems caused by illegible writing, and new software programs that automatically order appropriate laboratory tests for selected drugs can help to improve the response time in treating ADRs. Obviously, the expense of these programs is prohibitive for some institutions. Therefore, the focus should remain on identifying and eliminating as many preventable causes as possible 105,000 errors were documented by 368 facilities; more than 2,500 of these errors resulted in patient injury or death. Distraction was cited as the most common cause of errors, followed by an inadequate or inexperienced staff. The study emphasized the need for more pharmacists, nurses, and respiratory therapists.
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