CINV remains a significant problem among US patients, suggesting a need for more effective prophylaxis use in clinical practice.

These findings suggest that issues related to insulin injection are the primary reason patients with Type 2 DM discontinue insulin therapy. Understanding these patterns is important to develop interventions to overcome barriers to treatment and improve the medical outcomes of patients with Type 2 DM.

BACKGROUND: Opioid-related adverse drug events (ORADEs) are common causes of hospitalization and increased health care costs. OBJECTIVES: To (a) estimate rates of specific adverse drug events (ADEs) among gastrointestinal (GI) surgery patients receiving postoperative opioids; (b) examine the utility of a risk-scoring model in categorizing patients at high risk of experiencing ORADEs; and (c) quantify potential clinical/economic benefits of targeting high-risk GI surgical patients for opioid-sparing regimens in terms of hospitalization cost, length of stay (LOS), and 30-day readmission rates. METHODS: Using a retrospective design based on an administrative database, patients with an inpatient surgical procedure between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2010, were included. GI surgical patients aged > 18 years followed from admission through 30 days postdischarge were characterized as high or low risk using clinical/demographic characteristics and were evaluated for several outcomes. Using multivariate logistic regression, the ORADE incidence, total hospitalization cost, LOS, and 30-day readmissions were compared for high-risk and low-risk patients. RESULTS: In 87.8% (n = 3,235) of the surgical population, there was a strong concordance between risk assignment and ORADE incidence. Among the remaining 12.2% (n = 449) of patients, 5.5% (n = 202) were low risk with an ORADE, and 6.7% (n = 247) were high risk without an ORADE. Overall, 20.6% (n = 344) of high-risk patients experienced ≥ 1 ORADE (mean cost: $31,988; LOS: 12.1 days) compared with only 5.3% (n = 107) of lowrisk patients (mean cost: $25,216; LOS: 8.0 days). High-risk patients had higher hospitalization costs and longer LOS than low-risk patients, respectively (mean cost: $19,234 vs. $13,036; mean LOS: 6.8 days vs. 3.3 days). These differences correspond to 47.0% higher costs for high-risk patients and an LOS approximately twice as long compared with low-risk patients. CONCLUSIONS: Patient clinical/demographic characteristics influence the risk of developing ORADEs. Risk assessment tools can effectively identify high-risk patients, thereby enabling interventions that can reduce ORADEs, decrease hospital costs, and improve postsurgical experiences for patients.

Patients treated with glargine had significantly lower hypoglycemia event rates compared to the NPH group. The risk difference indicated that one hypoglycemia event would be avoided for every nine patients treated with glargine instead of NPH. The cost increase associated with treating nine patients with glargine rather than NPH is less than the cost of treating one hypoglycemia event. In this population, the savings associated with reduced hypoglycemic events more than offset the increased acquisition cost associated with glargine.

Transfer to glargine treatment from NPH in MDI regimens significantly reduces severe hypoglycemic episodes despite a decline in long-acting basal insulin without significant weight gain.