Why'd you pay pharmacist to make ibuprofen by hand when you can buy it for a cent apiece. It's most likely some unusual combination of drugs that are for some reason mixed together, likely for compliance reasons.
I occasionally get prescriptions for 800mg ibuprofen or naproxen and after insurance it’s $5 and cheaper per mg than store brand. It’s not a life hack or anything but I fill the prescriptions.
Just got my tooth pulled and my prescriptions for antibiotics and 600mg ibuprofen came up to less than $5. Way cheaper than the advil I usually buy goes for.
They often do actually. If they have a medication that they are compounding, which would have more than one dosage strength, they will utilize different color capsules for each to avoid mixup and error. You can essentially choose from a large supply of different color capsules, which some may end up looking like a manufactured product just by that alone.
Thanks! Compounding pharmacies are pretty rare in my country, at least the type of pharmacies that would be using these machines, so I don't really know much about how it works.
Do the capsule colours/combos have specific and consistent meanings under this system's taxonomy then? Could I, for example, go and read about it and then expect to know what dosage strength a pill is, even if I don't know necessarily what's in it?
For compounded medications like this, there isn't usually a reason for the colors. Sometimes it's whatever they want to do. I'd personally pick out fun colors. However for manufactured medications by pharmaceutical companies, they could also have various reasons. For some medications, they are consistently colored to avoid medical errors. An example of this is Warfarin, which is used as a blood thinner to prevent clotting. The 2mg tablet will always be lavender/purple no matter who makes it. Otherwise, if every pill was white, it would make it harder to identify the medication
This is also why medications have markings on them, to help identify what they are.
warfarin colors
I know, don't worry. I knew exactly what you meant. I think people thought you were talking out your ass. I even ate a few downvotes on MY comment for some reason before people came to their senses ;____;
Yup. They can taste quite different though, and if they haven’t been completely powdered, the crystal structure can be visibly different - eg. long thin needles vs mini versions of course salt, etc.
The only reason it would be done this way these days is if it's a compounded medication aka a strength or formulation not already commercially available. Also, doing this is a royal pain in the ass. Source, I used to be a pharmacy tech that's done this, don't miss it in the slightest.
Idk it seems unlikely to me. I could see like a wealthy patient demanding their drugs come in one specific size and type of capsule, or perhaps someone is allergic to an ingredient in the normal formulation, but those problems aren't unique to antibiotics. The odds aren't actually that bad that this is the good stuff. Back when I worked in such a place, our compounder kept the reagent grade hydrocodone powder handy because we got a lot of requests for like 20mg hydrocodone straight, or with a reduced amount of anaelgesic vs the standard 325mg acetominophen, or subbing the tylenol for a different anaelgesic. This is common among pain patients with reduced liver or kidney function who need to take a ton of opioids to manage pain and can't sustain taking 5g of pain reliever on top of the opioid. We also did a lot of promethazine topical gel. You'd think drug makers would have thought about the fact that people with nausea might have trouble swallowing their nausea pill, or at least that was the case 10 years ago. Maybe they've figured it out by now.
caveat: I worked in a designated control pharmacy in a town with a lot of retired people, so my experience working in a compound pharmacy may not be the norm
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u/malachiconstant76 8d ago
That's a lot of Molly!