- Joined
- Sep 22, 2007
- Messages
- 9
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I have 2 questions to my fellow pharmacists. =)
1) At our pharmacy, there are 2 pharmacists who firmly believes that if Amoxicillin 500mg is written as 1 BID, the "tablets" must be dispensed. They flip out if technicians input it with capsules and make sure it gets changed to the tablet formulation. They argue that although both the tablets and capsules even have the same salt (amoxicillin trihydrate), only the tablet formulation is approved for BID dosing (due to different rate of disintegration or something along that line) and using capsules would result in non-optimal therapy. The other 4 pharmacists including me couldn't careless whether techs input it with tablets or capsules (actually I prefer capsules since acquistion cost is cheaper)... Any thoughts on this topic?
2) Is KCl tablets truly contraindicated with Detrol LA? Our drug interaction program from First Bank alerts pharmacists whenever this combination is used. It says that KCL tablet is contraindicated with Detrol LA due to increased risk of GI irritation since Detrol LA slows down GI motility, thus prolonging the contact time of KCl tabs to GI line...etc.. and KCl should be changed to the liquid formulation. Clinical pharmacology also lists as "severity: high" interaction with similar description but I don't know how significant this reaction is. We do contact MDs to let them know about the interaction and they change it from tablets to liquid wihtout asking too much questions but it seems like no patient wants to do the liquid. They complain about the liquid(especially the taste) so much that doctors are starting to call back to check if it truly is a clinically significant interaction enough to initiate the change. This warning just recently started to show up in our computer so I have no idea how significant it is! Any inputs on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thanx!
1) At our pharmacy, there are 2 pharmacists who firmly believes that if Amoxicillin 500mg is written as 1 BID, the "tablets" must be dispensed. They flip out if technicians input it with capsules and make sure it gets changed to the tablet formulation. They argue that although both the tablets and capsules even have the same salt (amoxicillin trihydrate), only the tablet formulation is approved for BID dosing (due to different rate of disintegration or something along that line) and using capsules would result in non-optimal therapy. The other 4 pharmacists including me couldn't careless whether techs input it with tablets or capsules (actually I prefer capsules since acquistion cost is cheaper)... Any thoughts on this topic?
2) Is KCl tablets truly contraindicated with Detrol LA? Our drug interaction program from First Bank alerts pharmacists whenever this combination is used. It says that KCL tablet is contraindicated with Detrol LA due to increased risk of GI irritation since Detrol LA slows down GI motility, thus prolonging the contact time of KCl tabs to GI line...etc.. and KCl should be changed to the liquid formulation. Clinical pharmacology also lists as "severity: high" interaction with similar description but I don't know how significant this reaction is. We do contact MDs to let them know about the interaction and they change it from tablets to liquid wihtout asking too much questions but it seems like no patient wants to do the liquid. They complain about the liquid(especially the taste) so much that doctors are starting to call back to check if it truly is a clinically significant interaction enough to initiate the change. This warning just recently started to show up in our computer so I have no idea how significant it is! Any inputs on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thanx!
