| Editorial: European Association of Hospital Pharmacists in Geneva, Switzerland
IJPC is a part of the 11th Congress of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists meeting being held this week in Geneva, Switzerland. The theme of the meeting is "Quality and Medication Safety Hand in Hand." About 2,000 pharmacists from 34 countries, including the US, are on hand, meeting and sharing; English is the language of the meeting.
IJPC has a very active exhibit at the meeting; evidenced by our running out of materials by yesterday (Thursday) afternoon. Many of the participants acknowledged that they already receive the Journal, which is highly valued in these European countries, and asked many questions about it.
This editor had the opportunity of presenting two sessions with Dr. Andras Vermes, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His topic was the European GMP Standards for hospital compounding (a special subset of GMP standards), and mine was on the New Standards for Sterile Compounding: USP Chapter <797> Pharmaceutical Compounding-Sterile Preparations. Because of the amount of interest in these topics, there were numerous questions after the sessions. Interestingly, in many hospitals in Europe, intravenous admixtures are still prepared by nurses on the wards; this is of great concern to the hospital pharmacists.
Other topics at the meeting included drug information exchange across European countries, documentation of pharmacists' interventions, realities of integrating automated medications systems in hospitals, stability of injectable drugs, TPN for neonates, barcoding and RFID scanning, evidence-based drug formularies, drug distribution systems, patient safety, pharmaceutical care software, and various other satellite symposia.
It is very interesting to share experiences with pharmacists from Europe and to know that although much of pharmacy is the same, we all have difficulties in our profession. Some of the difficulties are similar but many are different. Europe is unique as it consists of many countries with their own governments. Although they are generally under the European Union, they do not all share the same language, currency or laws pertaining to pharmacy. This diversity contributes to many problems that have to be dealt with in order to serve their patients.
Our congratulations to the organizing committees for an excellent program, superb facilities, and an outstanding job of putting it all together!
Loyd V. Allen, Jr., Ph.D., R.Ph
Editor-in-Chief |
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CompoundingToday.com's literature search database consists of compiled literature citations and abstracts gathered from more than 800 medical and pharmacy publications. Only articles related to compounding are added to CompoundingToday.com's literature search database to help pharmacists find only the most relevant data more quickly.
Each week, article abstracts and citations are added based on topics discussed from the Compounders' Network List or topics about which subscribers have requested more information.
This week, the focus topic is migraine, principally alternative/complementary therapies and preventive therapies. A total of 58 articles have been included. Here is a sampling of some of the articles added:
- Allais G, Bussone G, De Lorenzo C et al. Advanced strategies of short-term prophylaxis in menstrual migraine: State of the art and prospects. Neurol Sci 2005; 26(Suppl 2): S125-S129.
- Boehnke C, Reuter U, Flach U et al. High-dose riboflavin treatment is efficacious in migraine prophylaxis: An open study in a tertiary care centre. Eur J Neurol 2004; 11(7): 475-477.
- Cady RK, Schreiber CP, Beach ME et al. Gelstat Migraine (sublingually administered feverfew and ginger compound) for acute treatment of migraine when administered during the mild pain phase. Med Sci Monit 2005; 11(9): PI65-PI69.
- Evans RW, Bigal ME, Grosberg B et al. Target doses and titration schedules for migraine preventive medications. Headache 2006; 46(1): 160-164.
- Lipton RB, Gobel H, Einhaupl KM et al. Petasites hybridus root (butterbur) is an effective preventive treatment for migraine. Neurology 2004; 63(12): 2240-2244.
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