Introduction Medication errors represent a serious issue affecting the U.S. health care system, accounting for the largest category of patient safety incidents within the larger category of medical errors. One report estimated that at least 1.5 million preventable medication errors occur in the U.S. each year. A list of high-alert medications (those with the highest potential for patient harm i...

M edication errors are unacceptably common. They occur during each step in the process of providing medication to hospital inpatients; prescribing, preparation, and administration. A recent UK study found a prescribing error in 1.5% of all medication orders written (a potentially serious prescribing error in 0.4%). Even higher error rates are associated with the administration of medication, in...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Chelation therapy is often necessary for patients who undergo chronic transfusion therapy for myelodysplastic syndromes. In these patients, deferoxamine, the most widely used chelating agent, has been reported to be effective in reducing the iron burden and the transfusion requirement. Unfortunately, compliance with the drug, that is usually administered by slow subcuta...

OBJECTIVE To compare glycaemic control and insulin dosage in people with type 1 diabetes treated by continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (insulin infusion pump therapy) or optimised insulin injections. DESIGN Meta-analysis of 12 randomised controlled trials. PARTICIPANTS 301 people with type 1 diabetes allocated to insulin infusion and 299 allocated to insulin injections for between 2.5...

Insulin therapy has enabled patients with diabetes to maintain blood glucose control to lead healthier lives. Today, rather than injecting insulin manually using syringes, a patient can use a device such as an insulin pump to deliver insulin programmatically. This allows for more granular insulin delivery while attaining blood glucose control. Insulin pump system features have increasingly bene...

Diabetes Technology Society facilitated a second meeting of insulin pump experts at Mills-Peninsula Health Services, San Mateo, California on November 4, 2009, at the request of the Food and Drug Administration, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories. The first such meeting was held in Bethesda, Maryland, on November 12, 2008. The group of phy...

Fourteen of the first 15 insulin-dependent diabetics to be treated in our unit by three weeks or more of outpatient continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion with a portable syringe pump completed a questionnaire about their reactions to the system. Motivation was more important to a favourable response than occupation or intelligence. Most patients thought that diabetic control was better with ...

INTRODUCTION The iPRECIO (Primetech Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) is a new form of pump for infusing small laboratory animals. The key features of the iPRECIO are that it can be implanted within the animal, it is refillable, and it is programmable. The infusion start-points and end-points are adjustable, infusion rate can be altered, and the infusion solution can be changed after the pump is impla...

It has been claimed that a raised blood lead level is a common finding among mentally retarded children and that this is of aetiological significance. One hundred and twenty-three mentally handicapped children of uncertain aetiology, 24 with mongolism, and 73 controls have been examined for lead intoxication. The results indicate that the three groups do not differ significantly as regards bloo...