Introduction: Self-medication is an increasingly frequent phenomenon worldwide; some studies suggest that there is a relationship with socio-economic and cultural factors. Objective: To determine the prevalence of self-medication and its related factors in a Colombian city. Materials and methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study, in Pereira, Colombia. We selected 414 adults using simple randomization sampling with houses used as the observational unit. The IRIS-AM instrument was used to collect the information required. Results: Four hundred and fourteen (414) people were interviewed, 62.6% were females, and mean age was 44 years; 77.5% of the sample had self-medicated at least once in their life and 31.9% during the last month. The most commonly used medications were: analgesics and antipyretics (44.3%), non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and anti-rheumatic medication (36.4%), and anti-histamine medication (8.5%). The most commonly self-medicated symptoms were: headache (55.7%), cold (16.2%) and muscular pain (13.2%). Multivariate analysis revealed an association between self-medication throughout life and storing medications at home, and between a high level of education and having a favorable opinion of self-medication. Storing medications at home and recommending them to others were associated with self-medication during the previous 30 days. Conclusion: Self-medication rates were found to be similar to those reported globally, but there is not an established pattern for this practice. Associations were found between social and demographic variables and self-medication, which require further characterization. Intention to self-medicate has not been well-described in other studies, and may be an important indicator which will contribute to future understanding of this phenomenon.

Introduction:The prescription and costs of antiulcer medications for in-hospital use have increased during recent years with reported inadequate use and underused.Aim: To determine the patterns of prescription-indication and also perform an economic analysis of the overcost caused by the non-justified use of antiulcer medications in a third level hospital in Colombia.Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study of prescription-indication of antiulcer medications for patients hospitalized in "Hospital Universitario San Jorge" of Pereira during July of 2012. Adequate or inadequate prescription of the first antiulcer medication prescribed was determined as well as for others prescribed during the hospital stay, supported by clinical practice guidelines from the Zaragoza I sector workgroup, clinical guidelines from the Australian Health Department, and finally the American College of Gastroenterology Criteria for stress ulcer prophylaxis. Daily defined dose per bed/day was used, as well as the cost for 100 beds/day and the cost of each bed/drug. A multivariate analysis was carried out using SPSS 21.0.Results: 778 patients were analyzed, 435 men (55.9 %) and 343 women, mean age 56.6 ± 20.1 years. The number of patients without justification for the prescription of the first antiulcer medication was 377 (48.5 %), and during the whole in-hospital time it was 336 (43.2 %). Ranitidine was the most used medication, in 438 patients (56.3 %). The cost/month for poorly justified antiulcer medications was € 3,335.6. The annual estimated cost for inadequate prescriptions of antiulcer medications was € 16,770.0 per 100 beds.Conclusion: A lower inadequate prescription rate of antiulcer medications was identified compared with other studies; however it was still high and is troubling because of the major costs that these inadequate prescriptions generates for the institution.

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Hemodynamic optimization is vital in high risk surgical patients. The aim is to achieve an adequate coupling between oxygen (O 2 ) supply and metabolic demands in an organism under surgical stress, thus preserving aerobic metabolism. Tissue perfusion does not necessarily correlate with arterial blood pressure. Instead, cardiac output is the most important variable that determines tissue oxygen supply.Monitoring based on the pulmonary artery cathe ter is considered the gold standard for cardiac output (CO) assessment. It is an expensive and invasive method with usefulness in various clinical conditions being a matter of debate [1,2].Nowadays, there are minimally invasive hemodynamic monitoring methods available. They are based on the estimation of cardiac output through the analysis of the pulse wave contour, such as the FloTrac system