抄録
The crushing of tablets and opening of capsules should not be done without proper care because these may adversely affect the pharmaceutical release mechanism. However, these tasks must naturally be performed for various clinical reasons. Since few descriptions on crushing and opening appear on package inserts and instructions, we investigated by means of a questionnaire sent to pharmaceutical companies whether or not the tablets and capsules in our hospital formulary are suitable for crushing and opening. The tabulated results showed that 51.0% of 468 tablets and capsules are suitable for crushing and opening and that 49.0% of them are not.
Considering the existence of different dosage forms with the same ingredients such as powders, liquid and external preparations which have been adopted in our hospital formulary and the physicochemical stability of the original drugs, we classified drugs, based on our findings, into the three groups of: suitable, unsuitable and conditionally suitable on the basis of the investigation and the current literature on this subject. On classification poduced 243 suitable (51.9%), 82 unsuitable articles (17.5%), and 143 conditionally suitable (30.6%) tablets and capsules.
According to the results of this investigation, few materials are available for giving useful information in reference to rational pharmacotherapy following crushing and opening. We believe that requests for the crushing of tablets and opening of capsules tend to rise with the increase in elderly patients and with advances in medical treatment. Consequently, pharmaceutical companies should refine and provide their reference materials including clinical data such as the pharmacokinetic data upon crushing and opening of the preparations.
