Ketil Arne Espnes

• MD
• Consultant at St. Olavs Hospital

Background One measure to support optimal opioid prescription is academic detailing (AD) with one-to-one visits by trained professionals (academic detailers) to general practitioners (GPs). Objective: To investigate the usefulness of AD visits on GPs’ opioid prescribing patterns in Norway, and academic detailers’ experiences with AD visits to GPs o...

Aim The POINT project aims to provide evidence to optimise chronic pain management, prevent adverse consequences of opioids, and improve chronic pain patients’ pain relief, functional capacity, and quality of life. We describe the outline of the project and its work packages. More specifically, we describe a cohort of persons with chronic pain and...

Background and objectives Metformin is used to treat gestational diabetes. It is also used to treat women with polycystic ovary syndrome and has been shown to prevent late miscarriage and preterm birth. However, increased renal clearance during pregnancy causes a decline in serum concentrations of metformin. The aim of this study was to explore the...

Introduction Academic detailing is an interactive educational outreach to prescribers to present unbiased, non-commercial, evidence-based information, mostly about medications, with the goal of improving patient care. Academic detailing in Norway is an approach for providing continuing medical education to general practitioners (GPs). The basis of...

Objective: To analyse if peer academic detailing by experienced general practitioners (GPs) could be a useful way to change Medical Doctors, (MDs) prescription of antibiotics for acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs) in out-of-hours service. Method: An educational Intervention study based on prescription data among MDs working in an out-of-...

The purpose of the study was to describe toxicological findings among women seeking health care after sexual assault, and to assess the relationship with so-called proactive DFSA (drug facilitated sexual assault). We also explored associations between ethanol in blood/urine and background data, assault characteristics, and clinical findings. We con...

Background: In many clinical situations it is useful to measure drug levels in patient samples. The purpose of this survey is to obtain an overview of the therapeutic drug monitoring analyses offered by Norwegian laboratories. Material and method: At the end of 2011, the authors of this article phoned all the public and private hospitals in Norw...

A 23-year old male with a history of schizophrenia treated with clozapine 900 mg/d was admitted to the hospital for a gastrointestinal infection. The trough serum concentration of clozapine at admission was 9074 nmole/L, that is, almost 4-fold the upper limit of the reference range. The patients did not report any adverse effects of clozapine. The...

In some situations, and particularly when intoxications are suspected, it would be advantageous if medicines and drugs of abuse could be swiftly detected in serum or urine. The Department of Clinical Pharmacology at St. Olav University Hospital has since 2004 been developing a comprehensive toxicology service (at all hours 7-days/week) for immediat...

There is an increasing interest in on-site testing for drugs of abuse. Based upon our own experience and published literature, we have reviewed advantages and disadvantages of such tests. On-site testing is also evaluated in relation to the recommendations for urinary testing of drugs of abuse from the Norwegian Health Authorities. The most signifi...

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the protective properties of the xanthine oxidase inhibitor allopurinol in the myocardial calcium paradox. Two injury levels, minimal and total calcium paradox, caused by different volumes (5 ml and 45 ml) of calcium-free perfusion (5 min) prior to calcium repletion (15 min) were examined ± allopurinol (...