Prescription audit for evaluation of present prescribing trends in a rural tertiary care hospital in South India: an observational study

Background: Prescription is a written order from the physician to pharmacist which contains name of the drug, its dose and its method of dispensing and advice over consuming it. The quality of life can be improved by enhancing the standards of the medical treatment at all levels of the health care delivery system. Prescription audit aims to provide precise information to a particular setting which enables rational policy decisions to be made. The present study was undertaken to find errors in current prescription practices in a tertiary care hospital situated in B G Nagara, Nagamangala, India.Methods: An observational study in Adichunchanagiri Institute of Medical Sciences, B G Nagara, Nagamangala, India was conducted during October 2015. 113 prescriptions were analyzed. Information regarding the patient, doctor, drug and legibility of the prescription were obtained.Results: Regarding patient details, name was present in all prescriptions with absence of height and weight in all prescriptions. Regarding prescriber details name, qualifications, address, phone number were not found in any prescriptions, but with 100% presence of signature. Regarding drug details generic name was found in 9.7%, and dose and frequency were found in 96.45% and 95.5% respectively. 96.4% of the prescriptions were found to be legible.Conclusions: Irrational prescribing is a global problem. The rationality of prescribing pattern is of utmost importance because bad prescribing habits including misuse, overuse and underuse of medicines can lead to unsafe treatment, exacerbation of the disease, health hazards, economic burden on the patients and wastage. Computerised prescription ordering eliminates some of the subjective features of prescribing. Thus, if the proper information is entered correctly in the electronic system, medication errors due to illegible handwriting, incorrect dose, incorrect medication for medical condition, and drug interactions can be reduced, because each prescription can be linked to high-quality drug databases that check that the information on the prescription is appropriate for the patient (e.g., age, weight, gender, condition, lab values, disease being treated, concurrent medications) and that known warnings and potential problems are brought to the attention of the physician, pharmacist and patient

Evidence of electron correlation and weak bulk plasmon in SrMoO3_{3}

We investigate the electronic structure of highly conducting perovskite SrMoO$_{3}$ using valence band photoemission spectroscopy and electronic structure calculations. Large intensity corresponding to coherent feature close to Fermi level is captured by density functional theory (DFT) calculation. An additional satellite at $\sim$ 3 eV binding energy remains absent in DFT, hybrid functional (DFT-hybrid) and dynamical mean field theory (DFT + DMFT) calculations. Mo 4$d$ spectra obtained with different surface sensitive photoemission spectroscopy suggest different surface and bulk electronic structures. DFT + DMFT spectral function is in excellent agreement with the coherent feature in the bulk Mo 4$d$ spectra, revealing moderate electron correlation strength. A large plasmon satellite and signature of strong electron correlation are observed in the surface spectra, while the bulk spectra exhibits a $weak$ plasmon satellite

Revelation of Mott insulating state in layered honeycomb lattice Li2_2RuO3_3

We investigate the role of electron correlation in the electronic structure of honeycomb lattice Li$_2$RuO$_3$ using photoemission spectroscopy and band structure calculations. Monoclinic Li$_2$RuO$_3$ having Ru network as honeycomb lattice undergoes magneto-structural transition at T$_c$ $\sim$ 540 K from high temperature phase $C2/m$ to low temperature dimerized phase $P2_1/m$. Room temperature valence band photoemission spectra reveal an insulating ground state with no intensity at Fermi level ($E_F$). Ru 4$d$ band extracted from high and low photon energy valence band photoemission spectra reveal that the surface and bulk electronic structures are very similar in this system. Band structure calculations using generalized gradient approximation (GGA) leads to metallic ground state while screened hybrid (YS-PBE0) functional reveals opening up of a gap in almost degenerate $d_{zx}$/$d_{yz}$ orbital, whereas $d_{xy}$ orbital is already gapped. Ru 3$d$ core level spectra with prominent unscreened feature provides direct evidence of strong electron correlation among Ru 4$d$ electrons which is also manifested by $|E-E_F|^2$ dependence of spectral density of states (DOS) in the vicinity of $E_F$ in the high-resolution spectra, establishing Li$_2$RuO$_3$ as Mott insulator

EVALUATION OF GENOTOXICITY PROFILE OF JASADA BHASMA (A ZINC-BASED MINERAL FORMULATION) IN SWISS ALBINO MICE

  Objective: Genotoxicity is regarded as one of the potential risk factors for causing pathological diseases. It was confirmed that many chemicals have the mutagenic activity which leads to cancer. A compound which interacts with genetic material DNA and shows adverse effects by altering its structure or function is referred to as genotoxic.Methods: The present study involved 40 Swiss albino mice weighing between 25 and 30 g body weights categorized into four different groups. Group-I (normal control) received 0.5% carboxymethyl cellulose as vehicle. Group-II (toxicant control) received 40 mg/kg/body weight cyclophosphamide on the 28th day. Group-III and IV received test drug JB 15.6 mg/kg and 78 mg/kg, respectively, for 28 consecutive days. Blood samples were collected and processed for evaluating by comet assay. The animals were sacrificed and collected the bone marrow from both the femur for chromosomal aberration and micronuclei assay.Results: JB administered at two different dose levels did not show any significant changes in the comet assay parameters, no micronucleus was found and did not produce any chromosomal aberrations both numerically and structurally when compared to positive test control group.Conclusion: The genotoxicity evaluation of JB did not show any chromosomal aberrations and presence of micronucleus. Thus, the safety data will refine therapeutic utility of JB encouraging their rationale use and translate into greater and broader utilization of JB

SARAS 2: A Spectral Radiometer for probing Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionization through detection of the global 21 cm signal

The global 21 cm signal from Cosmic Dawn (CD) and the Epoch of Reionization (EoR), at redshifts $z \sim 6-30$, probes the nature of first sources of radiation as well as physics of the Inter-Galactic Medium (IGM). Given that the signal is predicted to be extremely weak, of wide fractional bandwidth, and lies in a frequency range that is dominated by Galactic and Extragalactic foregrounds as well as Radio Frequency Interference, detection of the signal is a daunting task. Critical to the experiment is the manner in which the sky signal is represented through the instrument. It is of utmost importance to design a system whose spectral bandpass and additive spurious can be well calibrated and any calibration residual does not mimic the signal. SARAS is an ongoing experiment that aims to detect the global 21 cm signal. Here we present the design philosophy of the SARAS 2 system and discuss its performance and limitations based on laboratory and field measurements. Laboratory tests with the antenna replaced with a variety of terminations, including a network model for the antenna impedance, show that the gain calibration and modeling of internal additives leave no residuals with Fourier amplitudes exceeding 2~mK, or residual Gaussians of 25 MHz width with amplitudes exceeding 2~mK. Thus, even accounting for reflection and radiation efficiency losses in the antenna, the SARAS~2 system is capable of detection of complex 21-cm profiles at the level predicted by currently favoured models for thermal baryon evolution.Comment: 44 pages, 17 figures; comments and suggestions are welcom

Genetic Algorithm for Object Oriented Reducts Using Rough Set Theory

Abstract Knowledge reduction is NP-hard problem. Many approaches are proposed to get the minimal reduction, which is mainly based on the significance of the attributes. There are some disadvantages of the reduction algorithms at present. In this paper,. We propose a heuristic algorithm based on C-Tree for objectoriented reducts and also present a genetic algorithm (GA) for object oriented reducts based on C-Tree using rough set theory

Novel Distance Measure in Fuzzy TOPSIS for Supply Chain Strategy Based Supplier Selection

In today’s highly competitive environment, organizations need to evaluate and select suppliers based on their manufacturing strategy. Identification of supply chain strategy of the organization, determination of decision criteria, and methods of supplier selection are appearing to be the most important components in research area in the field of supply chain management. In this paper, evaluation of suppliers is done based on the balanced scorecard framework using new distance measure in fuzzy TOPSIS by considering the supply chain strategy of the manufacturing organization. To take care of vagueness in decision making, trapezoidal fuzzy number is assumed for pairwise comparisons to determine relative weights of perspectives and criteria of supplier selection. Also, linguistic variables specified in terms of trapezoidal fuzzy number are considered for the payoff values of criteria of the suppliers. These fuzzy numbers satisfied the Jensen based inequality. A detailed application of the proposed methodology is illustrated

Study of coronary artery disease in young population of Central India

Background: Coronary heart disease is the most common indication among cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and a major cause of mortality and morbidity. According to global burden of disease study estimates, nearly 24.8% of all deaths in India are attributable to CVD. Objectives of the current research study were to establish a correlation between varied risk factors and coronary artery disease (CAD), to determine angiographic characteristics individually in patients with multiple risk factors and to evaluate number of vessels involved in CAD.Methods: Present study was a prospective study conducted on 50 patients with acute coronary syndrome below 40 yrs of age admitted at the department of cardiology, Superspeciality hospital, NSCB medical college, Jabalpur. All patients included in the study were subjected to coronary angiography. The angiographic characteristics such as extent of CAD (characterized by the number of vessels with angiographic lesions) were determined.Results: Current study findings depicted that most of CAD patients were in age group of 36-40 years. Proportion of males was higher than females. One-fifth of patients were diabetics and 34.0% were hypertensive. It was observed that 54.0% CAD patients had history of smoking and 32.0% had history of premature CAD. Most of patients exhibited single vessel disease in CAG and left anterior descending (LAD) was the most commonly involved artery.Conclusions: Smoking was concluded as one of the major risk factor associated with CAD and most of patients exhibited single vessel disease, LAD being the most commonly involved artery. Significant number of patients with family history depicted high risk for CAD. Males were concluded to be more prone to CAD at younger age

Sizes and ages of SDSS ellipticals: Comparison with hierarchical galaxy formation models

In a sample of about 45,700 early-type galaxies extracted from SDSS, we find that the shape, normalization, and dispersion around the mean size-stellar mass relation is the same for young and old systems, provided the stellar mass is greater than 3*10^10 Msun. This is difficult to reproduce in pure passive evolution models, which generically predict older galaxies to be much more compact than younger ones of the same stellar mass. However, this aspect of our measurements is well reproduced by hierarchical models of galaxy formation. Whereas the models predict more compact galaxies at high redshifts, subsequent minor, dry mergers increase the sizes of the more massive objects, resulting in a flat size-age relation at the present time. At lower masses, the models predict that mergers are less frequent, so that the expected anti-correlation between age and size is not completely erased. This is in good agreement with our data: below 3*10^10 Msun, the effective radius R_e is a factor of ~2 lower for older galaxies. These successes of the models are offset by the fact that the predicted sizes have other serious problems, which we discuss.Comment: 13 pages, 9 Figures, 1 Table. Accepted by MNRA