Plos One
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Observational Study
Evaluation of antibiotic dispensing practice in community pharmacies in Jordan: A cross sectional study.
It is well known that the emergence of antibiotic resistance is linked to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics. Misuse includes self-medication and the inappropriate use of antibiotics because of improper dosage or improper duration than recommended. This study investigated three patterns of dispensing antibiotics in a sample of community pharmacies in Jordan. ⋯ In conclusion, a significant proportion of antibiotics are dispensed without prescription in Jordan. Moreover, a considerable proportion of prescribed antibiotics were inappropriate for the conditions concerned. This indicates the importance of enforcing the Jordanian regulations prohibiting the dispensing of nonprescription antibiotics and the implementation of continuous education to physicians and pharmacists to increase awareness about the emergence of antibiotic resistance.
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The Text Forum Threads (TFThs) contain a large amount of Initial-Posts Replies pairs (IPR pairs) which are related to information exchange and discussion amongst the forum users with similar interests. Generally, some user replies in the discussion thread are off-topic and irrelevant. Hence, the content is of different qualities. ⋯ Moreover, crowdsourcing platforms were used for judging the quality of the replies and classified them into high-quality, low-quality or non-quality replies to the Initial-Posts. Then, the high-quality IPR pairs were extracted and identified based on their quality, and they were ranked using three classifiers i.e., Support Vector Machine, Naïve Bayes, and the Decision Trees according to their quality dimensions of relevancy, author activeness, timeliness, ease-of-understanding, politeness, and amount-of-data. In conclusion, the experimental results for the TFThs showed that the proposed approach could improve the extraction of the quality replies and identify the quality features that can be used for the Text Forum Thread Summarization.
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While there are no national clinical guidelines for managing primary insomnia in Saudi Arabia, there are also no published studies of physicians' perceptions of and attitudes towards using international guidelines. The objective of this study was to explore the knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes of physicians practising in Saudi Arabia about using international guidelines for managing insomnia. ⋯ The health authorities in the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) should improve general public awareness about sleep disorders and provide focused training for specialists and technologists. Above all, KSA needs its own nationwide guidelines for treating sleep-disorders based on evidence-based clinical trials, consistent with its history, culture, socioeconomic conditions and traditions.
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Data on initiation and utilization of direct-acting antiviral therapies for hepatitis C virus infection in the United States are limited. This study evaluated treatment initiation, time to treatment, and real-world effectiveness of direct-acting antiviral therapy in individuals with hepatitis C virus infection treated during the first 2 years of availability of all-oral direct-acting antiviral therapies. ⋯ In the early years of the direct-acting antiviral era, <10% of people diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C virus infection received direct-acting antiviral treatment; median time to treatment initiation was 300 days. Future analyses should evaluate time to treatment initiation among those with less advanced fibrosis.
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A comprehensive study to assess quality and outcomes of care for Veterans with upper limb amputation is needed. This paper presents methods and summary findings from a national survey of Veterans with upper limb amputation. ⋯ Veterans with upper limb amputation have moderately impaired physical functioning. Prosthesis use rates were lower than previously reported. Although satisfied with their prostheses, nearly half used them ≤8 hours/day. Rates of musculoskeletal problems, phantom and residual limb pain were higher than previously reported. A substantial proportion never received prosthetic training, or VA amputation care.