Medication Management can be Improved with Liquid Drugs
Dysphagia ( swallowing trouble) is a very common issue for patients of nearly every age and their carers. There are many causes and explanations for dysphagia. Dry mouth is a very common explanation and one that can make swallowing anything difficult. For other patients the nature of their health issues can cause swallowing problems and some patients are just too young to take pills and tablets in a solid form.
Whatever the reason behind difficulties swallowing there is a solution to the situation. One solution that often comes to people’s minds would be to crush tablets or pills to make them easier to take. Although tablet crushing might seem like a good idea there are lots of reasons why it’s not.
One reason is many tablets are sugar covered to make them taste much more palatable. Crushing them takes away this coating and will make them taste rather unpleasant. Another reason is that some capsules and tablets are created to have an enteric coating. The intention of this is to keep the medicine together while it is in the stomach. This can be either to protect the medication from the stomach or the other way round. Finally other capsules have a modified release system. This is to release the medication over a longer time period and reduce the total amount of medicine that must be taken. Crushing capsules will release all the medicine at once.
There is however an effective solution to the problems of dysphagia and the problems it can cause. The use of liquid drugs, liquid formulation and liquid medicine is shown to improve medication management significantly. They make it easy for people of various age groups to take their prescribed medicine and they are available as an alternative for a variety of pills and capsules.
Rosemont are specials manufacturers of both licensed and unlicensed medications and offer a variety of liquid medicines to the health industry.
Medicine Management with Oral Liquid Medicines
A lot of patients receiving treatment have difficulties swallowing medicine. Dysphagia or swallowing difficulties can affect individuals of all ages including young children although it is most frequent in older people because they tend to be more vulnerable to the causative illnesses as well as age related changes in the functions of the saliva glands. Up to 1/3 of occupants in care homes have problems with Dysphagia which makes looking after their health and wellbeing a much more complicated job. Dysphagia can have a severe impact on a patient’s health because it can interfere with medicine management if the patient cannot or won’t take medicine in tablet form. Additionally there is a possibility that pills and tablets taken by mouth may cause a blockage of the throat or even a choking threat. There is also a risk that pills could become stuck in the throat which might lead to the incorrect dispersal of the medication to the body as well as possible damage to the oesophagus. The most popular and common way of coping with Dysphagia is tablet crushing to ensure they are more palatable and easier to swallow. However there are a lot of problems associated with crushing tablets that can have severe implications and may have an effect on the efficacy of the medicine. Quite a few pills have a sugar coating on them to make them taste more pleasant and although crushing them won’t have any impact on the efficiancy of the tablet it may make them taste really unpleasant. A lot of the pills and tablets produced today come with an enteric coating that’s intended to keep the pill together inside the stomach. Pills with an enteric covering should never be crushed because the covering is there to either guard the stomach from the medication or to protect the medication from the effects of the stomach . Fortunately there is an alternative for those who suffer from Dysphagia and the people that care for them. These days there is a wide range of medicines that can be taken orally and have the exact same effects as tablets or pills. Oral liquid medicine can be used to deal with the effects of a number of illnesses and conditions and the array of diseases it can be used to treat is increasing all the time. Liquid medicines possess a number of advantages over other forms of medications not least of which is the fact they are considerably easier to swallow for people suffering from Dysphagia.
