L. De Bolle

TL;DR: In conclusion, pragmatic community pharmacy-based programmes can significantly improve therapeutic outcomes in adult asthma patients.

TL;DR: There is little evidence from well‐designed randomized controlled trials of the impact of community pharmacist intervention on the clinical management of patients with type 2 diabetes, and how sustainable any observed effects on glycaemic control are, over time.

Abstract: Background: This observational community pharmacy-based study aimed to investigate headache characteristics and medication use of persons with regular headache presenting for self-medication. Methods: Participants (n = 1205) completed (i) a questionnaire to assess current headache medication and previous physician diagnosis, (ii) the ID Migraine Screener (ID-M), and (iii) the Migraine Disability Assessment questionnaire. Results: Forty-four percentage of the study population (n = 528) did not have a physician diagnosis of their headache, and 225 of them (225/528, 42.6%) were found to be ID-M positive. The most commonly used acute headache drugs were paracetamol (used by 62% of the study population), NSAIDs (39%), and combination analgesics (36%). Only 12% of patients physician-diagnosed with migraine used prophylactic migraine medication, and 25% used triptans. About 24% of our sample (n = 292) chronically overused acute medication, which was combination analgesic overuse (n = 166), simple analgesic overuse (n = 130), triptan overuse (n = 19), ergot overuse (n = 6), and opioid overuse (n = 5). Only 14.5% was ever advised to limit intake frequency of acute headache treatments. Conclusions: This study identified underdiagnosis of migraine, low use of migraine prophylaxis and triptans, and high prevalence of medication overuse amongst subjects seeking self-medication for regular headache. Community pharmacists have a strategic position in education and referral of these self-medicating headache patients.

TL;DR: Some aspects of medication management by home-dwelling older adults that could be improved by pharmaceutical care sendces are identified; assistance of cognitively impaired patients, management of practical drug taking problems, DDI screening, drug adherence, and chronic benzodiazepine use.

TL;DR: This study on COPD management in primary care highlights 4 main aspects which could be improved: (i) drug adherence, (ii) inhalation technique with pMDI's, (iii) influenza vaccination in COPD patients < yr and (iv) smoking cessation.