A pharmacy led program to review anti-psychotic prescribing for people with dementia

Background: Anti-psychotics, prescribed to people with dementia, are associated with approximately 1,800 excess annual deaths in the UK. A key public health objective is to limit such prescribing of anti-psychotics. Methods: This project was conducted within primary care in Medway Primary Care Trust (PCT) in the UK. There were 2 stages for the intervention. First, primary care information systems including the dementia register were searched by a pharmacy technician to identify people with dementia prescribed anti-psychotics. Second, a trained specialist pharmacist conducted targeted clinical medication reviews in people with dementia initiated on anti-psychotics by primary care, identified by the data search. Results: Data were collected from 59 practices. One hundred and sixty-one (15.3%) of 1051 people on the dementia register were receiving low-dose anti-psychotics. People with dementia living in residential homes were nearly 3.5 times more likely to receive an anti-psychotic [25.5% of care home residents (118/462) vs. 7.3% of people living at home (43/589)] than people living in their own homes (p?

Raman fiber source for the 1.6–1.75 μm spectral region

We propose and experimentally realize a composite Raman converter based on P-doped and Gedoped fibers. The converter has an emission wavelength of 1.649 μm and an output power of 1.2 W. Numerical simulation of the configuration suggested was performed. A similar converter scheme can be used to build sources with any emission wavelength in the range from 1.6 to 1.75 μm.