Selected items from the News and Latest Additions sections of www.palliativedrugs.com, the world’s leading palliative care website.
Hot topics
Evidence for unlicensed and off-label medicines
The UK Department of Health (DH) has announced that it will commission expert assessments of the evidence on the use of unlicensed or off-label medicines, including in rare conditions. These assessments will be designed to inform doctors’ decision-making and patients’ choices, not to provide a yes or no recommendation. The work will be delivered by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), through its NHS Evidence arm, beginning in spring 2012. For more information click here.
DH ‘Never Events’
The UK DH has published the list of ‘Never Events’ for 2011-12 which has expanded to 25 from the previous 8. These represent very serious, largely preventable patient safety incidents that should not occur if the relevant preventative measures are in place:
Existing: Wrong site surgery; Retained foreign object post-operation; Wrong route administration of chemotherapy; Suicide using non-collapsible rails; Escape of a transferred prisoner.
Modified: Misplaced naso- or oro-gastric tubes; Maladministration of potassium-containing solutions; Maternal death due to post partum haemorrhage after elective caesarean section.
New: Wrong implant/prosthesis; Wrongly prepared high-risk injectable medication; Wrong route administration of oral/enteral treatment; Intravenous administration of epidural medication; Maladministration of insulin; Overdose of midazolam during conscious sedation; Opioid overdose of an opioid-naïve patient; Inappropriate administration of daily oral methotrexate; Falls from unrestricted windows; Entrapment in bedrails; Transfusion of ABO-incompatible blood components; Transplantation of ABO or HLA-incompatible organs; Wrong gas administered; Failure to monitor and respond to oxygen saturation; Air embolism; Misidentification of patients; Severe scalding of patients.
For more information click here.
A review of nabilone for chronic pain management
The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) has published a review of clinical effectiveness, safety and guidelines for the use of nabilone for chronic pain management. It includes studies for neuropathic pain, cancer pain, non-cancer pain, spasticity-related pain resulting from MS and spinal pain. For more information click here.
Monitoring unwanted effects of antipsychotics
A recent article in the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) discusses monitoring for undesirable effects of antipsychotics in adults, with a particular focus on second-generation antipsychotics. For more information click here (subscription required for full text).
Prepared by Sarah Charlesworth and Andrew Wilcock