RESUMO
Background: Antimicrobial agents' wastage is a huge problem, especially for pediatric patients, resulting in excessive drug expenditure and increasing the economic burden on patients' families. Moreover, the cost of disposing of antimicrobial agents' waste and the risk of environmental and occupational exposure also increased. This study aimed to explore the cost-effectiveness of the vial-sharing strategy combined with the daily-rate charge mode for pediatric inpatients to provide a strategy for reducing patients' expenditures, saving medical costs, and reducing drug proportion. Methods: This retrospective study was conducted at Pharmacy Intravenous Admixture Service (PIVAS), Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Guangdong Province, China, in 2022. Data on prescription drugs were collected from the PIVAS system. Ten antimicrobial drugs with a frequency of prescriptions no less than twice once daily were selected, and the drug costs, drug weight, and drug saved were further analyzed according to the combination of real-time vial sharing strategy and daily-rate charge mode. Traditional single vial charge mode without vial sharing was set as a control strategy. The actual expenditure of the hospital was also calculated and analyzed. Results: During 2022, ¥ 4,122,099 (34.4%) was saved for inpatients by applying a vial-sharing strategy on ten antibacterial agents, and more than 46,343,750 mg (24.6%) of drugs were totally saved. The top 5 drugs saved by the real-time vial-sharing strategy were cefoperazone-sulbactam, vancomycin, amoxicillin-sulbactam, ceftazidime, and meropenem. Taken the price into consideration, the top five payment-saved drugs were vancomycin (¥ 1,522,385), meropenem (¥ 1,311,475), cefoperazone-sulbactam (¥ 736,697), imipenem-cilastatin (¥ 406,092), and amoxicillin-sulbactam (¥ 51,394). Moreover, the account balance of the hospital was up to ¥ 426,499. Conclusion: The real-time vial sharing strategy combined with the daily-rate charge mode greatly reduces drug wastage and patients' payments. It may be useful for hospitals with PIVAS to achieve vial-sharing while protecting the best interest of inpatients.
RESUMO
A novel biomedical coating was prepared from self-assembled colloidal particles through direct electrodeposition. The particles, which are photo-cross-linkable and nanoscaled with a high specific surface area, were obtained via self-assembly of amphiphilic poly(γ-glutamic acid)-g-7-amino-4-methylcoumarin (γ-PGA-g-AMC). The size, morphology, and surface charge of the resulting colloidal particles and their dependence on pH, initial concentrations, and UV irradiation were successfully studied. A nanostructured coating was formed in situ on the surface of magnesium alloys by electrodeposition of colloidal particles. The composition, morphology, and phase of the coating were monitored using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. The corrosion test showed that the formation of the nanostructured coating on magnesium alloys effectively improved their initial anticorrosion properties. More importantly, the corrosion resistance was further enhanced by chemical photo-cross-linking. In addition, the low cytotoxicity of the coated samples was confirmed by MTT assay against NIH-3T3 normal cells. The contribution of our work lies in the creation of a novel strategy to fabricate a biomedical coating in view of the versatility of self-assembled colloidal particles and the controllability of the electrodeposition process. It is believed that our work provides new ideas and reliable data to design novel functional biomedical coatings.