Bupivacaine and Compounding Pharmacies
Bupivacaine is a local anesthetic, a very important medicine administered usually by injection to reduce pain in patients. Bupivacaine compounding pharmacies are essential in pain management, especially in the field of surgery medicine. Compounding pharmacies are, by definition, drugs which are customized by a professional pharmacist or a physician to fit the unique needs of an individual patient. Reasons for compounding medicines vary, ranging from changing the state of aggregation, eliminating a non-essential allergic ingredient, to obtaining a strictly dosed drug which will cause less adverse effects.
Compounding pharmacies date far back in the history of pharmacies but has strongly and consistently evolved in recent decades. With cutting-edge technologies and modern, efficient science methods, pharmacists, who work closely with physicians, are able to properly assess and meet the needs of every patient. Counting all prescriptions issued, an estimated 1% are mixed and compounded. In the 1930′s and 1940′s nearly 60% of all medications available at the time were made this way.
A professional compounding pharmacist can design and prepare any kind of medication needed, from all areas of medicine. It is a personalized, more efficient medicine of the new era. Millions of people have unique needs that commercial medications cannot meet. Compounded, personalized medications are their only way to help themselves in achieving the desired outcome regarding their health. These patients include elderly persons with multiple health care issues, hypersensitive persons, hospitalized patients etc.
Compounded medications can be sterile intrathecal preparations for pain management, dermatological preparations, sterile ophthalmics and injectables, preservative-free and hypoallergenic preparations, hormonal preparations, pallatable pediatric preparations, wound care preparations, transdermal medications etc.
A compounded medicine has many strengths and advantages in comparison to commercial medications. Compounding enables certain individuals, who have i.e. swallowing disorders to obtain a proper medicine in different pharmaceutical formulations, such as a liquid or a suppository. Compatible medications which can be administered in the same delivery format, can be easily combined and represent another advantage of compounding medicines.
Another important aspect for pharmacy compounding is limited production of certain medicines, a problem that can be easily solved by simple acquiring chemical compounds needed for the mixture. By customized mixing of compounds, bad-tasted medicines are a matter of a past, ingredients causing bad flavor can easily be eliminated and a new, fresh and pleasant flavor can be incorporated.
If a patient has a diagnosed allergy to a specific ingredient of a commercial medication, compounding pharmacies are also useful as the compounded medicine can be freed from an allergy or intolerance causing ingredient.
Pain, as a natural occurring unpleasant sensation, is also a field where pharmacy compounding plays a great and important role. It offers a broad spectrum of drugs that are potent in pain management, regardless of its nature, acute or chronic. Chronic pain is a much more difficult to treat than the acute pain, it requires multidisciplinary approach and development of specific protocols to meet the individual needs of each and every patient.
The Physician knows his patient best, and is in a position of deciding and choosing the right medicine for him and his specific needs. Having a compounding pharmacist at his service, a physician can prescribe drugs tailor-made for his patient. This kind of a treatment causes less side-effects and is more efficient.
Compound medicines can be made in all kinds of different pharmaceutical formulations, such as creams, gels, sprays, capsules, tablets, injectables etc. All these therapeutical options allow physicians to recognize and precisely treat the real underlying problem his patient suffers from.
Bupivacaine is a nerve impulse blockator which increases the threshold for excitation in the axons, by slowing the impulse’s propagation and the action potential’s rise rate. Nerve fibers, their diameter alongside conduction velocity and myelination, affect the progression of anesthesia. Nerve loses its pain sensitivity first, followed by losing function for the temperature and touch.
If a local anesthetic reaches systemic circulation, it exacerbates side-effects, particularly on the cardiovascular and central nervous system. Therapeutic concentrations cause minimal adverse effects in cardiac functions, but an overdose can produce serious damages in conduction and excitability of heart muscle, which may end with severe cardiac disorders, such as atrioventricular block, ventricular arrhytmias and even a fatal cardiac arrest. Alongside these side-effects, depression of myocardium and vasodilation of peripheral blood vessels lead to decreased heart output and consequent hypotension ( low arterial blood pressure).
Bupivacaine and other local anesthetics produce paradoxical reactions on the CNS, such as stimulation followed by a depression stage.
Bupivacaine has a rapid action onset (an injection starts to work within one minute) and a long-lasting effect (averages 6-8 hours, much longer than lidocaine, its chemical relative). It enters to some extent to all body tissues, particularly affected are richly perfused organs – liver, lungs, heart and brain. Duration of action depends on the injected volume and concentration of bupivacaine.
Liver is the main organ for bupivacaine’s metabolism, after conjugation with glucuronic acid in the liver; it is being excreted by kidney via urine.
Bupivacaine compound pharmacies eliminate many undesired and unpleasant events when administering the drug via injection. Pharmacist can employ different dosage forms, such as gels, ointments and creams that easily penetrate the skin.
Topical gel formulations of bupivacaine can be applied to affected areas directly, in appropriate dosages and in a fast, efficient way. Physician can customize a drug to the precise amount that will suit patient’s need, and that will have all the positive aspects of the medicine, with almost none or a very few negative events. Transdermal forms bypass gastrointestinal system and avoid first pass metabolism in liver, and exercises its action directly in the pain inflicted area. They also provide higher local levels of the medicine at the site of application.
Combining medications to enhance efficacy, i.e. bupivacaine compounding pharmacies, which contain bupivacaine as an anesthetic and anxiolitic agents and other types of medicines is also one of the advantages of compounding pharmacies. By combining various substances which utilize different mechanisms of action to modify the sensation of pain, pharmacist can reduce their individual concentration in the medication and, by doing that, he reduces the possibility a negative effect.
A professional compounding pharmacy will be experienced in a wide variety of bupivacaine related needs such as bupivacaine injection, bupivacaine marcaine, bupivacaine msds, bupivacaine pump, bupivacaine with epinephrine, epidural bupivacaine, fentanyl bupivacaine epidural and lidocaine bupivacaine.
For More Information Contact RDS Medical Compounding Direct 888-806-6551
