Healthcare Professional Communication—Notice to Hospitals (HPC-NtoH): to inform the healthcare professional about time-sensitive issues concerning safety and/or efficacy of medicinal products. It is intended for hospital use only. Healthcare Professional Communication—Dear Health Care Professional Letter (HPC-DHCPL): to inform the healthcare professional about issues regarding selleck safety and/or efficacy of medicinal products. Health Product Recall (with type I, II or III):
these can be classified according to the urgency of the recall as follows: Health Product Recall type I: issued if the health product can cause severe adverse health consequence that may lead to death. Health Product Recall type II: issued if the exposure to or the use of the health product can cause adverse health consequences but is not life threatening or serious. Health Product Recall type III: the exposure to or use of the health product is not likely to cause any harm but the recall is initiated for other reasons such as minor deviation from specifications. Both PW and Health Product Recall type I are considered by Health Canada to be urgent communications, as they are issued for a medicine which
may pose a serious health risk. PA, HPC-NtoH, HPC-DHCPL and type II and III Health Product Recalls are semiurgent communications where the risk associated with the use of a medicine is not serious.14 A search for risk communication documents conveying issues relating to defective medicines (ie, substandard and falsified medicines) was carried out. This was performed through the official Health
Canada’s website and using the search engine allocated for advisories, warnings and recalls of health products (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/medeff/advisories-avis/index-eng.php). Health Canada started posting Health Product Recalls on its website in 2005. These recalls are the main tool that Health Canada uses to convey quality issues with medicines. Before that, there were only two types of risk communication documents (PA and HPC-DHCPL) available on Health Canada’s website. We wanted to examine the same Cilengitide documents throughout the years. Therefore, the search was started from 2005, and all risk communication documents issued between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2013 were included. All risk communication documents (PW, PA, HPC-DHCPL, HPC-NtoH and Health Product Recalls) were reviewed and the relevant information was then extracted. All relevant information regarding defective health products was compiled and exclusion criteria were as follows: veterinary medicines; medicines lacking efficacy or acquiring general safety issues; herbal and probiotic products; dietary and cosmetic products; and other natural heath product recalled for regulatory reason (ie, those do not have a valid marketing authorisation).