High baseline NLR was associated with worse OS for patients with early HCC; post-RFA NLR predicted not only OS, but also tumor recurrence.

Metformin users among diabetic patients with HCC undergoing RFA had a favorable overall survival compared with patients without metformin treatment.

ObjectivesTo improve patient safety, we investigated near-miss dispensing errors in our hospital and evaluated the effectiveness of specific preventive strategies.MethodsThe incidence and type of near-miss dispensing errors in a single hospital in Taiwan were identified in 2013. The causes of dispensing errors were analysed by consensus of an expert panel comprising a senior pharmacist on duty, a group leader in the pharmacy and an author. Because alphabetical trade names were routinely used in our pharmacy, they were used for similarity analysis. Trigram-2b and normalised edit distance (NED) were used to calculate orthographic similarity and distance measure, respectively. The correlation between drug-name confusion and dispensing errors was then studied. Preventive strategies, including the introduction of tall man letters, were completed at the end of 2013, and error data were then recollected in 2014. Differences between before and after the interventions were examined by t-test.ResultsBefore the intervention, look-alike alphabetical names were the main cause of dispensing wrong medicine (134/202, 66.3%). The frequency of near-miss dispensing errors correlated significantly with drug-name similarity (p<0.01). After implementation of preventive strategies, dispensing errors due to drug-name confusion were reduced significantly (77/140, 55.0%, p=0.004).ConclusionsThe frequency of near-miss drug dispensing errors correlated with greater similarity or lower NED scores, and dispensing errors related to drug-name confusion were significantly reduced by our interventions. However, other dispensing errors might need to be investigated in order to prevent them.

SUMMARY Background

SummaryBackground: This study was conducted to evaluate the influence of glutathione-S-transferase (GST) M1 and T1 polymorphisms in 184 patients with different stages of liver fibrosis and hepatitis C virus infection and 173 healthy control subjects. Methods: DNA samples were extracted from whole blood, and the polymorphisms of GSTM1 and GSTT1 were determined with PCR using fluorescence-labeled Taq Man probes. Associations between specific genotypes and progression of liver fibrosis were examined by use of the logistic regression analysis to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: Results show that no differences were found between the frequencies of GSTM1 (49.8% versus 50.2%) and GSTT1 (52.2% versus 47.8%) null genotypes in HCV-infected pa tients and healthy controls, respectively. In addition, there was also no significant relation between the frequency of GSTM1 or GSTT1 gene polymorphisms and fibrosis stage as classified by the METAVIR group. Conclusions: The combined GSTM1 and GSTT1 null genotypes showed an association between GSTM1 [-]/GSTT1 [-] and progression of liver fibrosis.