Community Practice

Letters from Drug Topics' readers

Antipsychotic agents have long been integral to the management of schizophrenia. First-generation, "conventional" antipsychotics are high-affinity antagonists of dopamine D2 receptors. Although they are effective against antipsychotic symptoms, they are also associated with a high rate of neurologic adverse effects. Such effects include tardive dyskinesia and extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS).

The clinical success of an ongoing pay-for-performance (P4P) pilot project by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires extensive participation by health-system pharmacists.

Improvement of restricted drug distribution systems (RDDS) should be a key element of the reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA).

Pharmacy OneSource has a new Web-based software, called Sentri7, that can monitor medication, laboratory, and patient data.

Pediatric patients are disproportionately affected by improper and wrong-dose errors in perioperative settings.

Now that we have electronic record technology, how should we set up a postmarketing surveillance system for drugs, biologicals, and medical devices?

A 70-year-old woman, T.R., has been transferred from an extended care nursing facility to your hospital with symptoms of fever, dyspnea with respiratory difficulty, cough, and sputum production. Her current medications include methadone 200 mg/ day (pain syndrome), risperidone (Risperdal, Janssen) 2 mg twice daily, digoxin 0.125 mg daily, and furosemide 20 mg twice daily.

The 2007 Polyanalgesic Consensus Panel recently recommended major changes to the guidelines for treatment, via intraspinal infusion, of patients suffering from severe chronic pain.

Don't forget to review inhaler use

Every pharmacist has his own horror stories that are seared into his brain. Here are some that stand out in my mind.

New pharmacy products, new indications for existing products.

In the early 1990s, when Health Mart was owned by regional wholesale distributor FoxMeyer, it was little more than a franchise tallying 800 stores. Now it is a pharmacy franchise logging 1,280 stores. The chain has experienced nearly a 400% growth rate over the past 10 months.

On April 30, 1939, the World's Fair opened in New York City. The theme for the fair was "building the world of tomorrow," and pharmacists were ready to do just that.

Given in combination with capecitabine (Xeloda, Roche), lapatinib (Tykerb, GlaxoSmithKline) has been approved for treating advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

APhA addrssed many issues including drug abuse, disposing of medications, and expansion of the pharmacist's role.

These are the top 200 brand and generic drugs by wholesale acquisition cost (WAS) dollars used in hospitals last year. The data were provided by Wolters Kluwer Health, Pharmaceutical Audit Suite (PHAST), January to December 2006.

Longs Drug Stores announced that it has signed an agreement to exchange six stores with Rite Aid.

The Council for Quality Respiratory Care (CQRC), a coalition of the 11 leading home oxygen therapy providers and manufacturers, has expressed concern regarding CMS' final rule on competitive bidding.

Take Care Health now operates 49 clinics in five states.

McKesson Pharmacy Systems processed more than two million PharmacyRx transactions in January.

Affordable Quality Pharmaceuticals (AQP) has developed a new program designed to help independent pharmacies compete with the $4 generic prescription plans

A new study sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) insists that new drugs and biologics will have a minor impact on total healthcare expenditures over the next five years.

The FDA announced the availability of a draft guidance designed to assist the research community in interpreting requirements for submitting reports of unanticipated problems such as certain adverse events reports to Institutional Review Board (IRB).

The agency is especially interested in getting views from consumers, pharmacies, manufacturers, wholesalers, and researchers.

An estimated three out of five people with Type 2 diabetes have at least one of the other serious health problems commonly associated with the disease.

A nationwide recall of griseofulvin oral suspension 125 mg/5 ml

Misbranding of Ziagen as Combivir.

An educational program is now available to help patients learn to self-administer Vivaglobin, the first subcutaneously administered immunoglobulin for the treatment of primary immunodeficiency.

RediClinicLLC has entered into a 50-50 partnership with Memorial Hermann, called RCMH LLC, for the operation of all RediClinics in the Greater Houston area.