• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.255-264
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• 2014

Objective: The aims of this study are to investigate the total volume of prescribed medicines against Alzheimer's disease (AD) and the trends of usage by analyzing the claims-data from the Korea National Health Insurance Service. Method: The demographic and claims-data were included the major AD treating medicines such as donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine and memantine, and analyzed during the period of 2010~2012. The assessing criteria were gender, age, habitation, types of medical institution, code of ingredients, outcomes of treatment, volume and amount of claims, and the numbers of patients with dementias. After trimming the data, it were analyzed by the market size, demographic traits, characteristics of medical service, characteristics of each anti-AD medicine, etc. Results: Among the chosen 4 medicines, donepezil had the top prescription volumes. Most prevalent prescribing preparations of donepezil were conventional types. However, among the non-conventional types, oro-dispersible formulation is the fast increasing one in both volume and growth rate. This specialized preparations to improve both toleration and adherence, tend to being prescribed generally at the tertiary medical institutions. While the younger patients with mild-to-moderate AD mostly treated by expensive medicines in resident at the tertiary hospitals, the rest older patients with severe AD have been treated non-expensive one at long-term care facilities. Conclusion: AD is a chronic illness therefore, long-term use of therapeutic medications are highly important. If an anti-AD treatment was applied steadily in the earlier stages, it would be achieved not only improving the quality of life of patient but also reducing the expenses in the medical and nursing cares. As the socioeconomical impacts of AD is expanding, healthcare professionals need to aware the importance of pharmacotherapy and to improve sociopolitical fundamentals.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.11-38
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• 2009

"Bioethics" may have various meanings depending on its roles. It may mean professional ethics for scientists and physicians, etc. It may also mean an academic discipline using interdisciplinary approach as well as a philosophical or a legal approach. "Bioethics" as an interdisciplinary study should often deal with public policy on bioethical issues. I call this role bioethics as a study of bioethics policy, which has to be developed as a new discipline. From this perspective, I deal with bioethical issues relevant to a human life before birth. There are various and often conflicting arguments about the moral status of a human life before birth such as the fertilization argument, the argument of genetic identity, so-called the "14 days" argument focusing on the formation of primitive streak, the argument of sentient being, and Michael Sandle's argument of an embryo as a being between a thing and a person. I argue that each of them is reasonable. Thus we are faced with reasonable disagreement on the views over whether a human life before birth has the same right to life as that of a person or whether right to life may be considered to be a matter of degree. If we acknowledge reasonable disagreement, as John Rawls pointed out, we should tolerate the views from ours in a plural society. Therefore, we cannot help making a policy that allows abortion and embryonic research with some limitations. When we say a certain act is morally permissible, "moral permissibility" does not mean that the act is morally right for all. Rather it means that the act cannot help being morally allowed for some persons although the others do not believe its moral rightness because they cannot right now rationally persuade others to accept their view.