Browsing by Author "Surenthirakumaran, R."

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Community pharmacists’ knowledge, perception and practice towards adverse drug reaction reporting and the factors influence on them in Jaffna district, Sri Lanka.
(Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2021) Thushiyananth, T.; Kalki, P.; Surenthirakumaran, R.
Introduction: Health care professionals are the prime source for spontaneous adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting. An increase in over-the-counter drugs and self-medication practice rapidly increase the risk of ADR incidents in community pharmacy setup. Objectives: To assesses the community pharmacists’ knowledge, perception and practice towards adverse drug reaction reporting and the influencing factors in Jaffna district. Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study with self-administered questionnaire which consist of five parts. All registered community pharmacists in Jaffna district were included in the study. The level of knowledge and perception was determined by the marks obtained by the pharmacists. The chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test were used to test the association of variables. Results: The response rate was 82.05% (N=64). Among the pharmacists, 40.6% had good knowledge on ADR reporting. Age (p=0.009) and work-experience (p=0.006) were statistically significant with knowledge. 75.0% of the pharmacists had good perception where, work-hours (p=0.040), work-experience (p=0.006) and work-position (p=0.013) were statistically significant association. Suspected and reported ADR in studied community pharmacists were 26.5% and 3.2% respectively. Prime reasons for not reporting ADRs were lack of patient complaints and doubt in the causality of a particular drug. 45.3% of the pharmacists were suggested that the frequent workshops would increase the ADR detection and reporting. Conclusions: Most of the pharmacists had poor knowledge and good perception but with very poor practice in ADR reporting. Junior pharmacists have more awareness in ADR reporting.
Completeness of reporting of cancer cases by cancer unit Jaffna to the national cancer registry
(Sri Lanka Medical Association, 2010) Surenthirakumaran, R.; Pathmeswaran, A.; Jeyakumaran, N.
BACKGROUND: The hospital based national cancer registry provides information regarding current status and trends related to cancer in the country. The cancer unit, Jaffna Teaching Hospital provides the information regarding cancer patients in Jaffna District to the national cancer registry. Objective: To estimate the degree of completeness of reporting of cancer cases by the cancer unit Jaffna to national cancer registry of Sri Lanka. METHODS: Details regarding personal identification and diagnosis of cancer during the period January 2006 to December 2008 were obtained from the following sources - indoor morbidity mortality registers (IMMR) in the Jaffna Teaching Hospital and other hospitals in the Jaffna District, case records at cancer unit, Jaffna, Histopathology reports at Teaching Hospital Jaffna and at Cancer Aid North/East and death certificates from Registrars of births and deaths in the Jaffna District. Sources were contacted and filtered for repetition and duplication. Number of cases from each of the sources and overlapping of cases between sources were calculated. Capture-recapture method was used to estimate the total number of cancer cases. RESULTS: The numbers of cancer cases from the different sources were: IMMR - 956, Cancer Unit - 786, Histopathology - 684 and Death Certificates - 558. There was varying degree of overlap between sources. Number of cancer cases estimated by capture-recapture method - 1147 (95% Confidence Interval - 1082-1215). Estimated completeness of reporting of cancer unit was 69% (95% CI- 65 - 73%) CONCLUSION: The completeness of hospital based cancer registry can be improved by collecting additional information from the IMMR and the pathology laboratory.