Just as every child is unique, so too are their needs when it comes to their medicine. Regular, mass-produced medication may not be a good fit for all children. For instance, if a child is among those who come down with about seven to eight colds a year, you may want to consider a safer, more effective alternative to over-the-counter remedies. Your children need their medicine, but how can they get them in a way that is safe and easy? In this case, pediatric drug compounding is the answer.
What is Pediatric Compounding?
Compounding is the process of mixing or altering ingredients to create custom medication. It fills a gap in health care by creating patient-specific medication and includes the combining of two or more drugs.
Pediatric drug compounding resolves several problems inherent to mass-produced medications. For example, some pills may be too difficult to swallow or a child may have an allergy to one of the ingredients in the drug that they need.
If your child has allergies to common, mass-produced medicine fillers such as dyes and gluten or needs custom medicine strengths and forms of dosage, then compounding is a great option to explore for them.
What are the Benefits to Pediatric Compounding?
Compounded medicines are especially suited to children, for the following reasons:
Unique Forms of Dosage
Based on your child’s medicine-taking capabilities and needs, compounded medications can come in many forms – not just tablets or capsules, which may be hard to swallow. The dosage forms available are:
- Emulsions
- Gummies
- Lollipops
- Lozenges
- Oral liquids
- Pacifier dosages for infants
- Rapid-dissolve tablets
- Solutions
- Suppositories
- Suspensions
- Syrups
- Topical gels or creams
- Transdermal preparations
These different forms of dosage are particularly beneficial for smaller children, as they are the ones who have the most trouble with adult-sized pills, tablets and capsules.
Flavored Medicine
More often than not, medicines don’t taste good. They are either bitter, salty or sour – all flavors that children don’t generally like. Luckily, drug compounding can make even the most off-putting medication palatable to a child.
Many pharmacies, like The Compounding Centre Pharmacy, can make compounded medicines that come in several flavors, including but not limited to apple, chocolate, grape, peppermint, banana, cinnamon, marshmallow, orange, bubble gum, strawberry and vanilla. Children can enjoy selecting their favorite flavor from a menu. Your child probably won’t mind taking their medicine when it tastes like chocolate.
Variations in Strength and Ingredients
Children have very specific medicinal needs that cannot always be met by commercially available medications. Some of them may have allergies and differing tolerances to drugs. They may require medicine that is sugar-free, casein-free, gluten-free, dye-free or soy-free.
This may make it a challenge to find mass-produced medicines that will be safe for them to ingest. A good compounding pharmacist can formulate medications that are the exact dose for a child of a certain age and size.
For child patients, especially, drug compounding can save lives. Your pediatrician should work closely with a compounding pharmacist to prescribe customized medications for several illnesses and diseases, such as diabetes, diaper rash, skin disorders, cold sores, respiratory disorders and more.
