[Incompatibility reactions in the intensive care unit. Five years after the implementation of a simple "colour code system"]. / Inkompatibilitätsreaktionen auf der Intensivstation. Fünf Jahre nach Einführung einer einfachen Farbkodierung.

In intensive care units (ICU) most of the drugs have to be administered by y-piece infusions or admixtures. Drug stability and compatibility are critical elements in the accurate and appropriate delivery of drug therapies to patients. Five years after the implementation of a simple "colour code system" in an attempt to minimize the number of incompatibilities, the situation has been re-examined. The clinical pharmacist collected 78 different medication regimes and the compatibility and incompatibilities were evaluated based on the available literature. Before initiating the "colour code system" in the ICU, 15% of the administered drugs were incompatible and afterwards the number decreased to 2%. This rate could be kept at 2%, even 5 years after the implementation of the system,without any further intervention. As a result of teamwork between nurses, doctors and clinical pharmacy a simple "colour system" was established to minimize incidences of drug incompatibility in the ICU. The system is highly accepted because the degree of uncertainty has been considerably reduced.

[The effectiveness of cytology in the prevention of cancer of the uterine cervix (author's transl)]. / Die effektivität der zytologischen Krebsvorsorge an der Cervix uteri. Eine Standortbestimmung.

The cytodiagnosis has become the main stay of prevention of cancer of the uterine cervix. The accuracy was once judged to be very high and is not considered to be quite as high to date. In this paper the possibilities for the development of mistakes and the type of mistakes are described, which can arise in a method which has several steps.