Community Practice

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.

Can a marriage between a highly automated pharmacy chain that operates in grocery stores and a company that provides home care services and operates retail health clinics be successful?

The FDA has approved the combination of sitagliptin (Januvia, Merck) and metformin for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes.

Patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome with constipation or chronic constipation will no longer have the option of treatment with tegaserod (Zelnorm).

Liver transplant patients with a prior history of hepatitis B (HBV) can now receive HepaGam B, from Cangene Corp., to prevent reinfection.

The pharmacy world is abuzz over the broadcast of a "20/20" report on pharmacy medication errors.

Letters from Drug Topics' readers

RediClinic LLC recently opened eight healthcare clinics in leased space inside Richmond, Va.-area Wal-Mart Supercenters.