[Determinants of the evolution of hospital pharmacy in France and Quebec: Perception of hospital pharmacists]. / Déterminants de l'évolution de la pharmacie hospitalière en France et au Québec : perception de pharmaciens hospitaliers.

BACKGROUND: Hospital pharmacy practice has evolved differently between France and Quebec. While this development is part of broader systems, French and Quebec hospitals have undergone significant changes over the years to cope with challenges, among others, the economic and demographic realities. PURPOSE: The main objective is to evaluate and compare the perception of French and Quebec hospital pharmacists about the factors that have contributed to the evolution of pharmacy practice in their respective context. METHODS: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The study focuses on a sample of experienced hospital pharmacists in France and Quebec. We targeted a convenience sample of 50 respondents per country. An online questionnaire with 15 pharmaceutical activities to which are connected nine factors that may have influenced the implementation of each of these activities in each country was used. The mean score was calculated for each of the nine factors for each activity. The perception of French and Quebec hospital pharmacists was then compared. A P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Two hundred and sixty hospital pharmacists were directly contacted in France and 79 in Quebec. Seventy-eight French pharmacists and 77 Quebec pharmacists responded to the survey, that is a respective response rate of 30% and 97%, respectively. The hierarchy of factors that contributed to the evolution of pharmacy practice was similar between the two countries, legislative and regulatory factors as well as the concern for risk management and quality dominate; scientific human, economic factors and training have a relatively similar position. For cons, the news factor (6th in France against the 10th position in Quebec) and the academic factor (10th position in France against the 6th position in Quebec) obtained inverse scores between France and Quebec. CONCLUSION: There are few data on the determinants of the evolution of hospital pharmacy in France and Quebec. The hierarchy of factors that contributed to the evolution of pharmacy practice is similar between the two countries, although differences of rank were found for the news and academic factors. Further studies are needed to better understand the factors that influence the evolution of pharmacy practice in health care institutions.

[Infants born to hypertensive mothers: a clinical-epidemiological study]. / I figli di madre ipertesa: studio clinico-epidemiologico.

The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the frequency of the hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and their effects on the newborn infants. The study was performed between January 1992 and December 1994 on the 4793 infants born at the Obstetric Divisions of the University of Messina. These 123 infants were born of hypertensive women and 4670 were control infants. Between the two groups of infants there were significant differences with regard to the incidence of nulliparity, prematurity, low Apgar scores at birth and low birth weight. The blood pressure and the haematic parameters were not different between the two groups of infants. Five of the infants born to hypertensive women were referred to the Division of Neonatal Pathology. The low frequency of infants born to hypertensive women observed by us suggests that in our population the hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are understimated. Moreover, the high incidence of preterm and LBW infants confirms that in infants born to hypertensive women the neonatal risks are consequent to fetal growth retardation.