What Is a Compounding Pharmacy?

What Is a Compounding Pharmacy?

If you have never heard of a compounding pharmacy, it may be for one of two reasons. It may be because you have always used pre-packaged medications, or it may be because you are familiar with the concept but not the name. It is really very easy to understand.

A compounding pharmacy is one in which medications or treatments are made to order, right in the pharmacy. At one time, all pharmacies compounded their own medications. There was no mass manufacturing system to dispense pills in neat little bottles.

There are a number of reasons why you or your doctor might want a specific mixture concocted just for you. The compounding pharmacist will follow the directives of a doctor in mixing the ingredients.

Sometimes, patients need a very small dose of a drug. For example, a person might be very sensitive to the drug or have a very small body, like as an infant. A compounding pharmacy provides a way for the drug to be given in the proper dose.

People with severe allergies may also have a difficult time finding medications that they can tolerate. For example, if they are allergic to wheat gluten, colored dyes, or other ingredients that are often found in pharmacy prescriptions, the compounding pharmacist can make up the medication using the important ingredients but leaving out the unnecessary additives.

Another job that a compounding pharmacy is used to handling is making a medication in a different form than it usually comes in. For example, if a drug is usually sold in the form of a pill, it might not be useful for a person with a disability who could not swallow pills to buy that drug in a liquid or gel form. The pharmacist could then make up the formula in a transdermal gel so that it could be easily used by anyone.

Some pharmacists also make simple compounded medications. They add flavors to cough syrups or other medications making them more acceptable for children. This encourages the youngsters to take their medicine.

Compounding pharmacies in pharmaceutical research companies make up the drugs that are to be tested. They follow the formulae given to them by the scientists in order to make enough of the drug to conduct the research. Their role is crucial in drug development.

One of the most well-known functions of compounding pharmacies that is often discussed in the news these days is the production of bio-identical hormones. These are hormones are made from natural plant sources and are usually used by many women instead of taking synthetic hormone replacement therapy.

A compounding pharmacy can make many kinds of treatments available for all kinds of people. It can serve people with special needs and those who demand something a little different from what other pharmacies offer. If you need an uncommon form of a common medication, a compounding pharmacy is the place to go.

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Scope of pharmacy education in Pakistan

Scope of pharmacy education


Pharmacy is a discipline which has grown quickly in Pakistan. Centres for pharmacy are developing into departments, departments into institutes and institutes into faculties. It appears that in the next few years there will be pharmacy schools, colleges and universities that will produce as many pharmacists as they can.

Along with its growth, pharmacy has changed some of its forms. In the beginning it was a diploma in pharmacy, then it changed to bachelor of pharmacy, and now a doctorate in pharmacy is being introduced in various universities.

DPharm in Pakistan is a wastage of time, as well as of money, if introduced without a proper service structure because different provinces have different job structures for pharmacists.

In Punjab, drug inspectors are employed at the taluka level, but in Sindh at the district level. This discourages the pharmacists of Sindh. Moreover, hardly any pharmacist is allowed to render his services in a true sense. Pharmacists thus prefer to go abroad where they are welcomed and well-paid.

Another reason behind promoting DPharm in Pakistan is to serve the privileged ones who should find it easier to go abroad where a BPharm degree is not sufficient to get a good job and those who carry BPharm degrees have to study there for at least one more year to convert their degrees into DPharm.

Studying one year in Pakistan is easy and cheaper than in developed countries where standard and hard work both are required simultaneously. The money spent on each student of DPharm will go to benefit a foreign country.

The government should look into the matter and formulate a balanced policy keeping in view the scope of pharmacy in all the provinces.

QADEER AHMED BHUTTO

Jamshoro

10. DAMIAN AND COSMAS - PHARMACY'S PATRON SAINTS

10. DAMIAN AND COSMAS - PHARMACY'S PATRON SAINTS

Twinship of the health professions, Pharmacy and Medicine, is nowhere more strikingly portrayed than by Damian, the apothecary, and Cosmas, the physician. Twin brothers of Arabian descent, and devout Christians, they offered the solace of religion as well as the benefit of their knowledge to the sick who visited them. Their twin careers were cut short in the year 303 by martyrdom. For centuries their tomb in the Syrian city of Cyprus was a shrine. Churches were built in their honor in Rome and other cities. After canonization, they became the patron saints of Pharmacy and Medicine, and many miracles were attributed to them.

9. GALEN - EXPERIMENTER IN DRUG COMPOUNDING

9. GALEN - EXPERIMENTER IN DRUG COMPOUNDING

Of the men of ancient times whose names are known and revered among both the professions of Pharmacy and Medicine, Galen, undoubtedly, is the foremost. Galen (130-200 A.D.) practiced and taught both Pharmacy and Medicine in Rome; his principles of preparing and compounding medicines ruled in the Western world for 1,500 years; and his name still is associated with that class of pharmaceuticals compounded by mechanical means - galenicals. He was the originator of the formula for a cold cream, essentially similar to that known today. Many procedures Galen originated have their counterparts in today's modern compounding laboratories.

8. DIOSCORIDES - A SCIENTIST LOOKS AT DRUGS

8. DIOSCORIDES - A SCIENTIST LOOKS AT DRUGS

In the evolution of all successful and enduring systems of knowledge there comes a time when the observations of many men, or the intensive studies of one, transcend from the level of trade or vocation to that of a science. Pedanios Dioscorides (first century A.D.), contributed mightily to such a transition in Pharmacy. In order to study materia medica, Dioscorides accompanied the Roman armies throughout the known world. He recorded what he observed, promulgated excellent rules for collection of drugs, their storage and use. His texts were considered basic science as late as the sixteenth century.

7. TERRA SIGILLATA - AN EARLY "TRADEMARKED" DRUG

7. TERRA SIGILLATA - AN EARLY "TRADEMARKED" DRUG

Man learned early of the prestigious advantage of trademarks as a means of identification of source and of gaining customers' confidence. One of the first therapeutic agents to bear such a mark was Terra Sigillata (Sealed Earth), a clay tablet originating on the Mediterranean island of Lemnos before 500 B.C. One day each year clay was dug from a pit on a Lemnian hillside in the presence of governmental and religious dignitaries. Washed, refined, rolled to a mass of proper thickness, the clay was formed into pastilles and impressed with an official seal by priestesses, then sun-dried. The tablets were then widely distributed commercially.

6. THE ROYAL TOXICOLOGIST - MITHRIDATES VI

6. THE ROYAL TOXICOLOGIST - MITHRIDATES VI

Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (about 100 B.C.), though he battled Rome for a lifetime, found time to make not only the art of poisoning, but also the art of preventing and counteracting poisoning, subjects of intensive study. Unhesitatingly, he used himself as well as his prisoners as "guinea pigs" on which to test poisons and antidotes. Behind him are rhizotomists, offering fresh, flowering aconite, ginger, and gentian. At lower right is a crater - a two-piece forerunner of the champagne bucket. His famed formula of alleged panantidotal powers, "Mithridatum," was popular for over a thousand years.