Spring cleaning your kit should include

TORONTO - Wash windows, raking the yard. You can use the cabinets and drawers to identify unnecessary clothing.

But if you do your spring cleaning, remember to spend time releasing the medicine cabinet? Chances are, if you open the doors of many medicine cabinets mirror pop, probably some drugs "just in case" medical experts see you this wish was not there.

Do not take Tylenol 3s or all of your doctor after surgery a couple of years prescribed Percocets? You are probably addicted to them in case they might be useful later. Leftover antibiotic prescribing pills that stopped once it started to feel better. (Stop that, by the way. 'S time.)

Drug remains for a rainy day in household kits saved involve a number of risks, two doctors wrote in a commentary Monday in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association.

Should enjoy Doctors, hospitals in the Toronto area, suggesting Canadian households, the next prescription drug costs Day - May 10 - get rid of the unused drugs.

Says Dr. Peter Wu, the Board residents in medicine at the Toronto General Hospital, and Dr. David Juurlink, a specialist in internal medicine and clinical pharmacology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, inertia and a natural inclination to save a little something may be helpful later are probably the reasons people cling to drugs, not the condition for which they were prescribed, require.

Wu said that two tons of unused drugs in the past year was pharmacies across Canada during the first national day of landing.

There are good reasons to believe that the problem has not disappeared. A study of people who have undergone dermatological surgery showed 86 percent of patients do not have all medications were prescribed and half of them planned to hold the remaining pills.

A systematic review - a study, the accumulated trials on a topic - found that more than a third of patients do not take all the pills prescribed antibiotics when they set. (Seriously, stop it. This is contributing to the development of resistant bacteria, a problem by the World Health Organization calls it a major threat to global public health.)

The same study found that more than a quarter of patients leftover antibiotics for subsequent infections - in other words, prescribed car without knowing what they suffered drugs when they by bacteria (bugs that antibiotics to treat) causes or certain antibiotics was useful for the evil that they had.

This is a bad idea, say the authors, for a variety of reasons. Included among them is the fact that the self-medication, as to delay the patient to delay by a physician could affect the test results, early diagnosis and treatment are evaluated.

There are other reasons to keep drugs still around is a bad idea, Wu and Juurlink is said.

Prescription drugs in the home can be taken by children and cause poisoning. From 2001 to 2008 more than 450 000 cases of poisoning in children were reported to poison control centers in the U.S. and 95 percent of these cases involved taking prescription drugs, they say.

Medications at home can also be abused anyone looking for a high level, the authors warn.

"It's really a problem, because in many cases we are powerful drugs that are dangerous just a little sit on the medicine cabinet to speak," said Robert Mann, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and Principal Investigator the drug and the Ontario Health Survey students.

This ongoing research students, reported from July to December last year that 15 percent of students in Ontario approved with prescription drugs - opiates and stimulants often - for recreational purposes. The most common source of drugs was family practice.

Man, who was not involved in the written examination for the medical journal, said that the use of leftover drugs "is not a good idea. Because you do not know very well what you are doing and you do not know who to deal with you."

"This is very dangerous. For example, drugs that strong opioid drug addiction that should be used only under medical supervision are."

So what should we do with unnecessary medications? Health Canada recommends switching to pharmacies - the plan for the day of delivery. Another option is the centers of municipal waste. The Ministry does not recommend washing unused in the toilet or in the trash drugs.

Wu said the idea of an annual day of national regulation is a good idea, can attract public attention to the problem. However, a better idea to get rid of unused, once you decide you do not need drugs.

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