Prospective single blind placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial to assess the efficacy and safety of metformin in promoting wound healing and weight reduction in non-diabetic overweight post-operative female patients

Background: Obesity is an important preventable risk factor that can affect wound healing. Oral hypoglycemic drug metformin apart from its antihyperglycemic and not hypoglycemic property has been reported to promote wound healing in non-diabetic animal studies and weight reduction in non-diabetic individuals. Hence, this: prospective randomized study single-blind placebo-controlled study was designed with the aim to assess the efficacy and safety of metformin in wound healing and weight reduction in a tertiary care hospital in Pondicherry during the period between December 2012 and January 2014.Methods: 215 non-diabetic post-operative patients with body mass index (BMI) of 25-29.9 kg/m2 from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology included after obtaining informed consent received tablet metformin 500 mg or placebo B.D from 2nd post-operative day up-to 30 days. Fasting blood sugar, postprandial blood sugar, BMI were recorded initially, and at the end. Clinical evaluation of wound was done on 8th, 15th and 30th post-operative days. Unpaired t-test was applied to compare the two groups for quantitative analysis and Chi-square test to analyze the qualitative outcome by using GraphPad prism - 6 software. p<0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.Results: Surgical site infection of 13.3% and 3.3% was observed in control and metformin groups respectively. Wound healing promoting effect of metformin was evidenced by p=0.0087 and 0.01 on 8th and on 15th day. Weight reducing effect was evidenced by p=0.0001 on comparing BMI. No significant hypoglycemia was observed. No adverse drug reaction was reported.Conclusions: Our study has shown metformin having best wound healing and weight reducing effect without producing hypoglycemia. Long-term studies on all types of surgeries in both males and females including emergencies are suggested

Effect of educational interventions on pharmacovigilance awareness among M.B.B.S. internee’s in a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) has played a major role in detection of previously unobserved ADRs. In spite of setting up ADR monitoring centres, only 6-10% of all ADRs are reported which has been contributed to the lack of knowledge among healthcare professionals. This study was planned to address this aspect. To evaluate and compare the effect of educational intervention in enhancing the knowledge of MBBS internee’s regarding pharmacovigilance.Methods: A cross sectional, educational interventional observational study was conducted using two copies of a pretested validated questionnaire (pre & post CME) with 17 questions among 130 MBBS internees. They were subjected to a Continuous Medical Education on pharmacovigilance. A hand’s on training on ADR reporting was also conducted in which they were divided into 10 batches and  asked to fill a Central Drugs Standard Control Organization Adverse Drug Reporting form on the case scenario given to them and forms were analyzed.Results: Out of 130 internees, 114 (87.69%) and 98 (75.38%) had completely filled them. The overall awareness about pharmacovigilance increased from 62.50% to 82.25% (p< 0.0001). There was a statistically significant increase in mean value from 14.38 ± 0.3020 to 18.92 ± 0.2860 (p< 0.0001) on analyzing the knowledge scores. 90% of ADR forms revealed substantial errors, which were explained to the participants.Conclusions: This study clearly shows that early sensitization through educational interventions at internship phase of M.B.B.S. will increase the number of ADRs being reported in our country

Effect of educational intervention on the knowledge and attitude on prescribing amongst interns of a tertiary care hospital: a questionnaire based study

Background: Prescribing correct therapy is the essential part of physicians and therefore, adequate knowledge and confidence on drugs efficacy, safety, cost, and convenience is important. Understanding the knowledge and perceptions of medical students will help to identify the problems in clinical pharmacology teaching. Prescribing performance and competence can be significantly improved by training and giving feedback to the prescriber. The objective of the study was to evaluate and compare the effect of educational intervention in enhancing the knowledge of medical interns on prescribing practice.Methods: A Cross sectional, Educational Interventional observational study was conducted using two copies of a pretested validated questionnaire (Pre & Post CME) with 15 questions among 110 MBBS interns. They were subjected to a continuous medical education on rational prescription writing followed by a hand’s on training on prescription writing in which they were divided into 9 batches and asked to prescribe for the case scenario given to them and the same was audited and feedback was given.Results: Out of 110 internees’, 105 (95.50%) and 95 (96.90%) had completely filled the pre & post educational intervention questionnaire. The overall knowledge and attitude of interns has improved after the intervention. Significant increase (P value < 0.0001) in the Mean + Standard deviation value from 5.81 + 2.1 to 7.35 + 3.18 is noted on applying Paired t Test. All the prescriptions were rational. The formats of their prescriptions were scrutinized and the precise way of writing the same was explained to the interns.Conclusions: This study clearly shows that early sensitization of Physicians about rational prescription writing during Internship phase by means of educational intervention/training program can reduce the number of prescription errors

A Low-Complexity Euclidean Orthogonal LDPC Architecture for Low Power Applications

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes have been implemented in latest digital video broadcasting, broadband wireless access (WiMax), and fourth generation of wireless standards. In this paper, we have proposed a high efficient low-density parity-check code (LDPC) decoder architecture for low power applications. This study also considers the design and analysis of check node and variable node units and Euclidean orthogonal generator in LDPC decoder architecture. The Euclidean orthogonal generator is used to reduce the error rate of the proposed LDPC architecture, which can be incorporated between check and variable node architecture. This proposed decoder design is synthesized on Xilinx 9.2i platform and simulated using Modelsim, which is targeted to 45 nm devices. Synthesis report proves that the proposed architecture greatly reduces the power consumption and hardware utilizations on comparing with different conventional architectures

Effect of educational interventions on pharmacovigilance awareness among M.B.B.S. internee's in a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) has played a major role in detection of previously unobserved ADRs. In spite of setting up ADR monitoring centres, only 6-10% of all ADRs are reported which has been contributed to the lack of knowledge among healthcare professionals. This study was planned to address this aspect. To evaluate and compare the effect of educational intervention in enhancing the knowledge of MBBS internee's regarding pharmacovigilance. Methods: A cross sectional, educational interventional observational study was conducted using two copies of a pretested validated questionnaire (pre and post CME) with 17 questions among 130 MBBS internees. They were subjected to a Continuous Medical Education on pharmacovigilance. A hand's on training on ADR reporting was also conducted in which they were divided into 10 batches and asked to fill a Central Drugs Standard Control Organization Adverse Drug Reporting form on the case scenario given to them and forms were analyzed. Results: Out of 130 internees, 114 (87.69%) and 98 (75.38%) had completely filled them. The overall awareness about pharmacovigilance increased from 62.50% to 82.25% (p< 0.0001). There was a statistically significant increase in mean value from 14.38 +/- 0.3020 to 18.92 +/- 0.2860 (p< 0.0001) on analyzing the knowledge scores. 90% of ADR forms revealed substantial errors, which were explained to the participants. Conclusions: This study clearly shows that early sensitization through educational interventions at internship phase of M.B.B.S. will increase the number of ADRs being reported in our country. [Int J Basic Clin Pharmacol 2016; 5(1.000): 149-154

Effect of educational intervention on the knowledge and attitude on prescribing amongst interns of a tertiary care hospital: a questionnaire based study

Background: Prescribing correct therapy is the essential part of physicians and therefore, adequate knowledge and confidence on drugs efficacy, safety, cost, and convenience is important. Understanding the knowledge and perceptions of medical students will help to identify the problems in clinical pharmacology teaching. Prescribing performance and competence can be significantly improved by training and giving feedback to the prescriber. The objective of the study was to evaluate and compare the effect of educational intervention in enhancing the knowledge of medical interns on prescribing practice.Methods: A Cross sectional, Educational Interventional observational study was conducted using two copies of a pretested validated questionnaire (Pre &amp; Post CME) with 15 questions among 110 MBBS interns. They were subjected to a continuous medical education on rational prescription writing followed by a hand’s on training on prescription writing in which they were divided into 9 batches and asked to prescribe for the case scenario given to them and the same was audited and feedback was given.Results: Out of 110 internees’, 105 (95.50%) and 95 (96.90%) had completely filled the pre &amp; post educational intervention questionnaire. The overall knowledge and attitude of interns has improved after the intervention. Significant increase (P value &lt; 0.0001) in the Mean + Standard deviation value from 5.81 + 2.1 to 7.35 + 3.18 is noted on applying Paired t Test. All the prescriptions were rational. The formats of their prescriptions were scrutinized and the precise way of writing the same was explained to the interns.Conclusions: This study clearly shows that early sensitization of Physicians about rational prescription writing during Internship phase by means of educational intervention/training program can reduce the number of prescription errors