Background: In developing countries, the substances most commonly used for self-poisoning are agricultural pesticides including rodenticides. Authors aimed to assess the clinical status and outcomes of patients with rodenticide poisoning in a tertiary care hospital.Methods: This retrospective record-based study was carried over three years. Apart from demographic details, information regarding the time of ingestion, nature and amount of the compound. Other details included clinical features, complications, treatment and outcome of the patient. Descriptive analysis was carried out by the mean and standard deviation for quantitative variables, frequency and proportion for categorical variables.Results: Of the 120 study subjects, 85 (93.40%) participants self-harmed, 2 (2.20%) were homicidal, and 4 (4.40%) had accidentally consumed the rodenticide. About 52 (32.70%) participants had vomiting, 34 (21.38%) had giddiness, 32 (20.13%) participants had abdominal pain. On the whole, 85 (73.28%) participants recovered, 23 (19.83%) participants had absconded, 6 (5.17%) participants had referred and 2 (1.72%) of them expired.Conclusions: Phosphorous compounds, particularly yellow phosphorous are the most lethal rodenticides followed by Coumadin. Symptomatic management of the patients at the earliest possible time is the mainstay, as there are no specific antidotes for any of the compounds.

Objective: To determine the feasibility of opportunistic screening for type 2 diabetes (T2DM) among adult attendees of medicine outpatient department (OPD) at a tertiary care hospital in Puducherry district, India. Materials and Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted among nonpregnant nondiabetic adults above 30 years of age attending MOPD to screen for diabetes mellitus (DM). Those with random blood glucose of 6.1 mM/l or more were sent for definitive tests; fasting plasma glucose and post prandial (PP) plasma glucose. Double data entry and validation was done. Results: A total of 510 outpatients were tested for random blood glucose: 278 (54.5%) had blood glucose above the cut off. Out of 278, 83 (29.9%) returned for definitive tests: 18 [21.7%, 0.95 CI: 14.2%, 31.7%] had either fasting plasma glucose and/or PP plasma glucose in diabetic range and 16 (19.3%, 0.95 CI: 12.2%, 29.1%) had impaired fasting glucose and/or impaired glucose tolerance. Case detection (screening yield) of diabetes in the adult outpatients was 3.5% (0.95 CI: 2.2%, 5.5%). Conclusion: Compliance or follow-up for definitive tests was poor resulting in low screening yield. Future studies should focus on interventions to improve follow up of outpatients.

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Background: Good prescribing practices form the essence of drug therapy for better patient care. The major aim of better prescribing is to improve rational prescribing. Deprescribing gained momentum in recent decades. Objective: This study aimed to explore the attitude and beliefs of deprescribing among patients and their caregivers forming dyads in a tertiary health care facility. Methods: Cross-sectional, questionnaire-based prospective study done for two months. Attitude towards deprescribing was assessed by using validated rPATD (revised Patient attitude towards deprescribing) questionnaire. Cohen's kappa coefficient was used to measure the agreement between the views of people and their caregivers forming dyads about medication cessation. Results: 312 patients and caregivers (156 forming dyads) participated in the study. Among 156 patients, 25.6% were hypertensives & 21.2% had diabetes. 41.7% were between 36-50 years of age. Only 16.7% belong to the elderly age group. 2.5% were taking >5 medications. 43.6% of patients and 62.2% of caregivers were female. 51.3% of the patients were willing to stop one or more of their regular medicine(s) under the treating physician's advice, but 62% were satisfied with their current medicine(s). 33.4% were reluctant to stop taking medicines for a long time. Conclusions: In our study, more than 50% of people and their caregivers were willing to try medication cessation under their physician's recommendation. There was moderate agreement between patients and their caregivers in the trial of medication cessation. Thus, the results obtained from this study may help towards improving rationalized prescribing practices in the institutional setup.

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