Purpose: To identify parental perception of a take-back program for medications. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study using a questionnaire was conducted at Hamad Medical Corporation, the only tertiary pediatric hospital in the State of Qatar at the time of the study. Qatar is a rapidly developing country with limited national data on the awareness of medication misuse among adults living with children at home and on the safety practices regarding medication disposal. Results: 305 questionnaires were completed (response rate = 90%). More than 80% of parents were in between 20 and 39 years of age, 70% of them were females, and 80% were college graduates. Approximately 90% of participants have immediate relatives who were taking medications for chronic diseases. Almost 60% of parents stated that they keep unused medications at home, whereas 10% were not aware of the fate of the left over medications. Approximately 95% of the parents dispose the expired medications. In terms of the mode of disposing the medications, 66% of caregivers dispose the medication bottle or package in the trash can, whereas 14% remove the medications from the bottles or packages and throw them in the trash, and 15% put them through the drain. When asked if participants read disposal measures in the medication pamphlet, only 10% answered “always,” whereas 26% answered “sometimes.” Participants were asked if they have heard of any medications take-back programs, 75% answered no, whereas 14% were not sure. However, almost 60% of them will use the take-back program if available and 18% were not sure. Conclusion: Parents residing in the State of Qatar have deficiencies in knowledge about medication disposal. Parent's attitudes and perceptions are considered indispensable targets for community health intervention. Our next step is to share our data with the ministry of health to spread awareness about the proper disposal of medicines and take-back programs in Qatar.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify parental perception of household medication storage. Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study utilizing a questionnaire was carried out at Hamad Medical Corporation, the solely tertiary pediatric hospital in the State of Qatar at the time of the study. Qatar is a young developing country with limited data on the awareness of medication storage among adults with children at home and on the safety practices regarding medication storage. Results: Three hundred and five questionnaires were completed. The vast majority of parents were married, one-third of them were males, and more than three quarters were college graduates and younger than 40 years of age. Almost 80% of the parents had more than three children but less than seven. In addition, 23% of participants were health-care workers. Almost 90% of the participants stored medications in a place that is easy to reach. However, the same percentage stated that those medications were stored in a locked place and that children did not have access to them. Approximately 10% of caregivers store multiple medications in one bottle, and the same percentage of participants do not check the expiration date on the medication labels. In terms of the most common medications stored at home, antihypertensives were on top of the list. Our study has shown that parental education and being a health-care worker were each associated with the difficulty in reaching medications ( P = 0.006 and P = 0.011, respectively). Moreover, the percentage of participants who shared medications was significantly higher among those who were not working in the health-care section compared to those who were ( P = 0.004). In addition, being a female parent and a college graduate was associated with the possibility of keeping excess or leftover medications at home ( P = 0.025). Conclusion: Parents residing in the State of Qatar have some deficiencies in knowledge about medication storage. Parent's attitudes and perceptions are deemed vital objectives for population's health intervention.
Background: Neoadjuvant therapy refers to the administration of systemic therapy, either chemotherapy or endocrine therapy, prior to definitive breast surgery. Patients who derive clinical benefit from neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) include patients with high-risk breast tumors, large breast tumors, and locally advanced tumors, including those initially ineligible for surgery. The goals of NACT include rendering inoperable tumors resectable, surgical down staging for patients who prefer breast conservation, and de-escalating axillary surgery in those with clinically positive nodes. Aim of the Study:To evaluate the response rate to neoadjuvant chemotherapy or hormonal therapy in cases of early breast cancer (T1, T2-N0, N1-M0) according to the TNM staging and to find the predictive value of the reduction of the prognostic value Ki-67 for the response to the neo-adjuvant treatment. Patients and Methods: This prospective study was conducted at tertiary care hospital at the breast surgery unit and clinical oncology departments, Ain Shams University Hospitals from 2015 till 2017 and performed on a total of 60 female patients with newly diagnosed early breast cancer patients according to TNM staging system.Results: During the follow-up of the patients, the current study results revealed that Ki-67was significantly decreased with significantly decreased tumor size at follow up among the studied cases. Baseline and follow up Ki-67 were lowest in complete response, followed by partial response, then stable disease and highest in progressive response, the differences statistically were significant. As a result, Ki-67 statistically had significant moderate diagnostic performance in predicting clinical responses, was highest in predicting progressive response. Conclusion:Ki-67 is a valuable marker, as it has prognostic and predictive abilities after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Ki-67 expression may be considered a valuable potential biomarker and add a prognostic information to that obtained from classical prognostic factors such as tumor size.
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