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What is compounding?

Compounding is the traditional pharmacy art of preparing medications to meet the individual needs of individual patients.  It is the preparation, mixing, packaging and labeling of a drug or device according to a practitioner’s prescription which results in a customised medication being made by the pharmacist to meet the patient’s individual need.

Unique compounds for individual needs

Drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies adequately fill the needs of a large number of patients, however they are unable to fulfill every need.  Compounding allows the physician to fill the unique needs of individuals by customizing their medication to suit them. 

How we can help patients

1. Customised Dosage Forms.
Many drugs only come in limited dose forms (eg. tablets). While this may suit the majority of patients, some may need a customised dose form. We can compound existing drugs into liquids, suspensions, creams, lotions, sprays, and so on.

2. Sensitivity to different ingredients.
Some patients can have allergies or objections to different excipients. Lactose, a common filler in capsules and tablets, is not well-tolerated by patients with lactose-intolerance. Others are sensitive to preservatives and alcohol. We can compound medicines that are lactose-free, alcohol-free and preservative-free.

3. Increase Absorption
Certain drugs, such as testosterone, are not very effectively absorbed through the gut. By compounding testosterone into a transdermal cream, we can bypass the gastrointestinal route and help increase drug levels into the blood stream.

4. Increase Patient Compliance
Drugs that are hard to swallow or administer, taste awful or require multiple dosing can often result in patients not willing or able to take them properly. We can compound drugs into smaller capsules, add flavouring or even reduce the number of times they need to be taken each day using slow-release formulations, to help make them acceptible to patients

5. Discontinued Products
Drug companies will often discontinue products that do not give them a financial return. However, the raw active ingredients can sometimes still be sourced, and we can compound these products for patients who continue to respond well to these drugs.

6. Patients not Responding to Conventional Therapies
Many less widely-known drug therapies exist, but some practitioners do not know about them because they are not widely publicised. These "orphan" drugs are often unpatentable moieties that pharmaceutical companies cannot claim sole ownership of, hence not bothering to market them. Despite this, many patients may still gain benefit from their use.

7. New Therapies & Drug Combinations
Innovative new therapies and drug combinations are also being discovered all the time. In many instances, these new therapies and drug combinations are not available as commercial products and can only be obtained as individually compounded products.

What can be compounded