Development and validation of a clinical decision support system to prevent anticoagulant duplications.

Background And Objective: Unintended duplicate prescriptions of anticoagulants increase the risk of serious adverse events. Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs) can help prevent such medication errors; however, sophisticated algorithms are needed to avoid alert fatigue. This article describes the steps taken in our hospital to develop a CDSS to prevent anticoagulant duplication (AD).

Mast cell leukemia: clinical and molecular features and survival outcomes of patients in the ECNM Registry.

Mast cell leukemia (MCL) is a rare subtype of systemic mastocytosis defined by ≥20% mast cells (MC) on a bone marrow aspirate. We evaluated 92 patients with MCL from the European Competence Network on Mastocytosis registry. Thirty-one (34%) patients had a diagnosis of MCL with an associated hematologic neoplasm (MCL-AHN).

Fungemia and necrotic lymph node infection with Sporopachydermia cereana in a patient with acute myeloid leukemia.

Sporopachydermia cereana is a rare yeast found in necrotic cactus tissue, predominantly in the Americas. Infection in humans with clinical data has only been reported in four patients so far, all of whom died, either directly from the pathogen or from other complications of immunosuppression. Treatment of the yeast is complicated by difficulties in identification of the pathogen with conventional diagnostic techniques and by intrinsic resistance to echinocandins.

Long-term follow-up of patients with follicular lymphoma receiving single-agent rituximab at two different schedules in trial SAKK 35/98.

Purpose: We report the long-term results of a randomized clinical trial comparing induction therapy with once per week for 4 weeks single-agent rituximab alone versus induction followed by 4 cycles of maintenance therapy every 2 months in patients with follicular lymphoma.

Patients And Methods: Patients (prior chemotherapy 138; chemotherapy-naive 64) received single-agent rituximab and if nonprogressive, were randomly assigned to no further treatment (observation) or four additional doses of rituximab given at 2-month intervals (prolonged exposure).

Results: At a median follow-up of 9.

TRIB1 overexpression in acute myeloid leukemia.

In this report, an AML patient with an additional ring chromosome 8 was investigated in detail. Fluorescence in situ hybridization showed high amplification of MYC on the additional ring chromosome and signals on both chromosome 8 homologues. In addition to the amplified segment from 8q24, no additional chromosomal aberration was found by array comparative genomic hybridization.

Anti-Xa activity in obese patients after double standard dose of nadroparin for prophylaxis.

We measured anti-Xa activity before and at 2, 4, 9 and 12 h after subcutaneous injection of 0.3 ml nadroparin (2850 IU anti-Xa) in normal-weight volunteers (median bodyweight 71 kg, n=5) and compared them to the anti-Xa activity after subcutaneous injection of 0.6 ml nadroparin (5700 IU anti-Xa) in obese patients (median bodyweight 134 kg, n=8).