So tonight, I shall declare that I am thankful that Procardia XL isn't nearly as popular as it used to be.
For those of you not in the profession and/or not quite as long in the tooth as myself, I'll tell you Procardia XL was once a wildly popular blood pressure medication. We used to say we should install a keg of it in the back of the store where I interned and thinking about that just now reminded me that there was once a time when I was not a cynical soul-scarred retail burnout.
Sigh.
Around the time the world started to crush my spirit though, the Procaria XL and its kin started to get their clock cleaned by Norvasc. Once the toast of the town, the life of a Procardia tablet these days must be a lonely one. And for that I can sleep better at night, because that means I have probably escaped the poop bag.
You see, Procardia XL used a rather ingenious extended-release mechanism. In a nutshell, water diffused through the shell of a Procardia tablet at a controlled rate, which pushed out the active medicine contained inside through a tiny hole drilled into the tablet with a laser. Very high tech stuff. Osmotic coating, laser drills, true cutting edge health care my friends.
That osmotic shell though? It never dissolved. It didn't have to. The drug shot through the laser hole and left the rest of the tablet behind. Now, if you don't know where I'm going with this, I want you to think about what happens when you combine this pharmacokinetic wizardry with the mindset of an average pharmacy customer with too much time on their hands.
Every pharmacist my age or older has taken concerned customer questions about a Procardia XL tablet found in their stool. And more than a few have been presented with a poop bag containing an empty shell. Thank God I never got a poop bag.
It's nice to end the week on a positive note.
6 comments:
That's pretty interesting....I actually see Procardia XL fairly often for PIH. We give the regular nifedipine for pre term contractions, although that use hasn't been as popular the past 6 months...
I got a poop bag with a Concerta in it.
I poop bag would have been a delight for me. We were a drop off for sputum samples for analysis at the NYC Department of Health Lab. There is nothing like someone with TB coughing in my face as they give me that sample.
I never got the poop, they had already done me the favor of separating out the tablet shell and bringing that alone, though usually in a napkin, ziplock bags were too new back then!! I still think that was the coolest thing ever though.. evidence that the drug companies really WERE doing some R&D work and coming up with funky new stuff.. unlike today!!
OMH (no blasphemy from here!) I guess I had been rather successful in blocking some memories better than others. After one such encounter, I took to making sure I warned my patients about it.
I think for such a potential liability, Pfizer didn't really have too many issues. I remember we also needed to warn patients about interactions with drugs that altered gastric motility.
I read a company was attempting to use OROS for hydromorphone. (Guess I do more therapeutic than pharmaceutic CE.)
I get Klor-con in a napkin more often than I'd like.
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