Browsing by Author "Bhandari, Bijay"
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Publication Counterfeit Healthcare Products: Nepal at a Vulnerable Position(Nepal Medical Association, 2022) Bhandari, Bijay; Rayamajhi, GauravAbstract Nepal stands in a vulnerable position when it comes to counterfeit medicines as two of its major trade partners countries are leading producers of falsified healthcare products. The impacts that it can lead to are a lower standard of healthcare delivery to the public, increased cost of treatment, antibiotic resistance, and even fatality. The time of crisis as the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is often seen as an opportunity to endorse substandard products in greater amounts. The people’s doubt over the medicine is another issue generated by this malpractice that can lead to problems like vaccine hesitancy which can have scary outcomes so forth in a pandemic situation like this. Stronger national policies and vigilant authorities are prime to overcoming flourishing counterfeit culture as it is a peak time when we can not put public health at stake.Publication Potential Drug-drug Interactions among Hospital Discharge Prescriptions in a Tertiary Care Centre of Nepal: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study Authors(Nepal Medical Association, 2022) Bhandari, Bijay; Lamichhane, Pratik; Yadav, Dipendra; Bajracharya, Sangha RatnaAbstract: Introduction: In our setup, potential drug-drug interactions are overlooked in routine clinical practice. In general, most of the discharges are handwritten in the developing world, and the discharge prescriptions are not checked with the database for potential drug-drug interactions checker. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of potential drug-drug interactions in the prescribed drugs in clinical practice in a tertiary care centre of Nepal. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in a tertiary care center from October 2019 to December 2019. Ethical approval was taken from the Institutional Review Committee (Reference number: 394(6-11)E2/075/76). Through simple random sampling, the data about drug prescription was collected from the patient discharge records of the Department of Internal Medicine. The potential drug interactions were checked by using Lexicomp® drug interactions. Data was analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20.0. Point estimate at 95% Confidence Interval was calculated along with frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation and mode. Results: Among 382 discharge prescriptions, the prevalence of potential drug-drug interactions was 299 (78.3%) (74.1-82.4 at 95% Confidence Interval). A total of 1519 drug interactions with a mean of 5.08±3.89 drug interactions per prescription was identified. The major, moderate and minor drug-drug interactions according to the severity were found to be 163 (10.7%), 1162 (76.5%), and 178 (11.7%) respectively. Conclusions: The prevalence of potential drug-drug interactions is high among the patients on discharge compared to similar studies. Use of drug-drug interactions checker databases before discharge with computer-based discharge prescriptions is recommended.