Compounding refers to the pharmaceutical preparation of a licensed pharmacist’s drug to meet an individual patient’s unique needs. The patient could either be a human or an animal. Compounding pharmacists perform this procedure when there isn’t a commercially available drug that meets those needs. The U.S Pharmacopeial Convention described compounding as preparing, assembling, altering, mixing, packaging, and labeling a particular drug, a delivery device by a licensed medical practitioner’s prescription.
The following are the benefits of compounding pharmacies.
1. Allowing Access to Discontinued Medications
Sometimes, large manufacturers discontinue some drugs, making it very hard for patients who still require such medications to fill and manage their prescriptions. Compounding pharmacists play a vital role in the providence and access of such medications through recreating the pharmaceutical-based ingredients.
Therefore, if your prescription was discontinued, pharmacy compounding can ensure that you still get the right medication for your condition rather than searching for a potentially less effective treatment. Compounding pharmacies can access the highest quality of pharmaceutical ingredients to fill a prescription through the latest quality control processes, research, and techniques to meet the patient’s unique needs.
2. Make Medications a Lot Easier to Take
Some medications come with a precisely distasteful and unpleasant flavor. Completing such a dosage can be quite difficult and unsettling for you. You can seek a compounding pharmacist to have them custom make your prescription from scratch.
Better still, you may get an opportunity to pick out the flavor. This aspect of compounding pharmacies is particularly advantageous when dealing with medication of patients that are highly likely to refuse medication, for instance, elderly patients, children, or even pets. If you are attending to such a patient, or are in the position yourself, you may have the medication adjusted to your or their liking.
3. Allowing Patients Alternative Dosage Forms
It’s not uncommon to prefer your dosage in a different form. The most common problem patients face is the difficulty in swallowing their drugs in pill form; it may be easier for them to take their medication in a flavored liquid form.
You may also have your medication compounded in a topical form. For instance, you can have the compounding pharmacist use the active ingredients in your medicine to make a gel or cream that allows the medicine components to get absorbed via the bloodstream through the skin.
4. Make Allergy-Friendly Medications
A sensitive allergy, such as an intolerance to lactose, alcohol, gluten, or dyes may cause you unwanted reactions after taking some medications. In some other cases, it may be that the commercially available medication contains ingredients, such as preservatives and fillers, which your body cannot tolerate due to allergies or sensitivities to the said substances.
If you are a victim of any of these, it would be advantageous to use a compounding pharmacy. The pharmacist will make a formula of all other active ingredients in the medication and leave out any of the ingredients that irritate your body. That way, you still manage to proceed with the right treatment.
Reach Out to a Compounding Pharmacy
The priority of compounding pharmacies is identifying their patients’ needs. It’s a great way to address medications you still need in order to treat your illness but keep factors such as allergies at bay. Compounding pharmacies can also often provide treatments for the resistant or even treat unusual diseases that the traditionally produced medication has failed to address.
Just like all other pharmacists, compounding pharmacists are professionals with extensive experience and training. Along with their ability to compound medications, the pharmacists will also answer any questions you may have regarding your prescription: doses, side effects, what to do after you miss a dose, and how long it will take the medication to work, and other issues.
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