From Drug Topics: Information for pharmacists about prescription medications and over-the-counter products
July 2, 2009
By:Alaina Scott, Senior Editor
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that it is requiring manufacturers to put a boxed warning on the prescribing information for the smoking cessation drugs Chantix and Zyban.
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July 1, 2009
By:Drug Topics staff
A new national retail pharmacy, Fresenius Medical Care Rx, has opened in Nashville. It will provide prescriptions, OTC medications, and diabetic testing supplies through the mail to dialysis patients and will offer them access to pharmacists with specialized training in kidney disease.
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July 1, 2009
By:Pat daCosta, PharmD, RPh
When the subject of medication errors arises, confusion of drugs with similar names is a real hazard. On written prescriptions, one drug name may be misread as another, and with verbal orders, a drug name may be misheard. Pharmacies are seeking ways to deal with the challenge.
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July 1, 2009
By:Valerie DeBenedette
Healthcare institutions are attacking medication errors with expanded use of information technology, drug-dispensing systems, and computerized ordering. Other technologies enable healthcare providers to see all information pertaining to a given patient, regardless of the providers' location within the system and no matter what program was used to collect the data.
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July 1, 2009
By:Drug Topics staff
A survey of new Rx, new OTC, new indications, and new generics
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July 1, 2009
By:Drug Topics staff
Two new designs from Scriptchek add extra label space for patient information on prescription vials. The extended tab label more than doubles available label space. On the rectangular vial, three flat sides offer space for additional patient instructions, and its label offers up to four times more printing space.
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July 1, 2009
By:Martin Sipkoff
Controversy has surrounded the use of drug-eluting stents (DES) since their introduction as a tool of interventional cardiology in 2003. Studies released that year associated DES with increased risk of blood-clotting several years after implantation, and use declined. Since 2007, when the FDA concluded that DES could be appropriate therapy for some patients, intense scrutiny has produced little evidence that DES carry more risk than bare stents do.
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June 24, 2009
By:Alaina Scott, Senior Editor
California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. recently announced a settlement with CVS/pharmacy that requires the company to make sure that expired products are not sold in stores and to provide customers a $2 coupon if they identify products past their sell-by dates.
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| Drug Topics is a monthly news magazine, guided by a board of pharmacy leaders, reporting on all phases of community, retail, and health-system issues and trends. We cover managed care and professional, national, and state activities as well as new therapies involving prescription and OTC drugs.
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| What do you spend the most time counseling customers on? | |
| OTC medications | | 58% | | | Painkillers | | 13% | | | Adverse drug reactions | | 20% | | | Other | | 9% | |
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