Self-monitoring of blood pressure and the role of community pharmacists in Kuwait.

Objective: To determine the types of devices for self-monitoring of blood pressure available to consumers in Kuwait and the pharmacists' knowledge and level of information provided to consumers when purchasing such devices.

Materials And Methods: It was possible to contact 196 of the 230 eligible pharmacies from five governorates in Kuwait. Ten of these were used to pretest the questionnaire and six declined to participate.

Self-medication practices in Khartoum State, Sudan.

Objective: The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of self-medication with proprietary medicines and herbs in Khartoum State, Sudan, and to evaluate factors associated with self-medication.

Methods: A pre-piloted questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 1,200 individuals, selected from all three cities of Khartoum State using a multistage stratified clustered sampling.

Results: The response rate was 83.

Patient reporting of adverse drug reactions: useful information for pain management?

Background: Patients' perceptions of adverse effects caused by the medicines they are prescribed may influence how they use these medicines. Little is known about patients' perceptions of the adverse effects of specific drugs in everyday use and whether these differ from those identified by clinical trials and standard post-marketing surveillance methods.

Aim: To compare reports of perceived adverse drug reactions (ADRs) obtained directly from patients taking tramadol to those found in clinical trials and two methods of post-marketing surveillance.