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Since lots of drug items are produced every year, the prescribed drug names are diversified by either many kind of brand names or the generic names. So it is becoming more difficult to identify the drugs in dispensing. To classify the situation of prescribed drug, the kind of prescription drug names in 11,310 prescriptions of inpatients during the period of Jun. 13 through to Jun. 19 in 1988 was surveyed. To observe drug identification problems, the change of pharmaceutical company during the last 5 years and the color and the existence of identification code on the tablets or capsules kept at our hospital in Oct.,(Oct., 1988) 1988 have been surveyed. From this survey, the proportion from prescribed names are 24.0, 22.7, 45.9 and 7.4％ for abbreviated name, generic name, brand name and hospital manufactured name, respectively. A single changing in the pharmaceutical company was most common with 139 items. It was found that white color was most common with 58.0％ in the tablets, double-color combination was most common with 54.2％ in the capsules, and 53.2％ of the tablets and 42.4％ of the capsules have identification code. From these results, it is suggested that the drug identification code must be given on all drugs being manufactured by the pharmaceutical companies. It is also suggested that an evaluation on the bioavailability of many brand name products that have same generic name should be made.
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