20 research outputs found
Drug-drug interactions in an intensive care unit of a tertiary hospital in southern Chile: Evaluating databases agreement
Context: Patients in intensive care units have a high risk of experiencing a pharmacological interaction due to complex pharmacotherapy, severe disease, and comorbidities; increasing the risk of adverse effects of medications. Electronic databases are useful sources to identify drug-drug interactions (DDI), especially when new therapeutic alternatives are added to conventional treatments.
Aim: To identify the frequency and severity of potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) in ICU patients using three electronic databases.
Methods: Clinical pharmacists collected data on medication dosage and route of administration, sex, age, length of stay, comorbidities, and APACHE II score using patient records. Micromedex, Medscape, and Lexicomp databases were used to identify and categorize pDDIs. Intensivists confirmed if a pDDI was clinically present. kappa concordance test was utilized as a measure of agreement among databases.
Results: Of the 93 ICU patients studied, pDDIs were identified in 89. A positive incremental relationship was found between number of medications, length of stay, and number of pDDIs. Patients with respiratory pathologies were most predisposed to presenting DDIs. Agreement among databases was mixed. Intensivists confirmed 5% of pDDIs.
Conclusions: Discrepancies among databases and in intensivist judgment highlight a significant information gap in the identification of DDIs
EURECA: European-Japanese microcalorimeter array
The EURECA project aims to demonstrate technological readiness of a micro-calorimeter array for application in future X-ray astronomy missions, like Constellation-X, EDGE, and XEUS. The prototype instrument consists of a 5 × 5 pixel array of TES-based micro-calorimeters read out by two SQUID-amplifier channels using frequency-domain-multiplexing (FDM) with digital base-band feedback. The detector array is cooled by a cryogen-free cryostat consisting of a pulse tube cooler and a two stage ADR. Initial tests of the system at the PTB beam line of the BESSY synchrotron showed stable performance and an X-ray energy resolution of 1.5 eV at 250 eV for read-out of one TES-pixel only. Next step is deployment of FDM to read-out the full array. Full performance demonstration is expected end 2008.This work was financially supported by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research
(NWO).Peer Reviewe
Magneto-optical spectra of long range chemically ordered FePd(001) alloy films
Magneto-optical and magnetic properties of sputtered epitaxial FePd (001) alloy films have been studied as a function of the film deposition temperature. Characteristic changes in the magnetic anisotropies and Kerr effect spectra are observed and correlated with the degree of long range chemical ordering.G.A. thanks the DGICYES Spain for financial support.Peer reviewe