?What is pharmaceutical compounding

What is pharmaceutical compounding?
Pharmaceutical compounding involves the creation of non-patent-protected or unregistered pharmaceutical preparations by or at the request of pharmacies and hospitals, based on a doctor’s prescription.

The aim is to prepare a personalised medicine, that is not commercially available, that meets the patient’s specific needs.

Personalisation through compounding

Compounding gives a prescriber the option to offer a personalised treatment, for example, by prescribing a different form of administration or a different dosage, suited to a patient’s specific needs. Patients are not always able to use the standard available administration forms of existing medications, for example, due to age, problems with swallowing or side effects. In addition, an alternative form of dosage, for example a topical form of dosage in the form of a cream, can reduce side effects and the potential for addiction and deliver the medication directly to the location of the condition more effectively, for example when treating pain.

Although a pharmaceutical preparation is a customised medicine, pharmaceutical compounding companies like Fagron can prepare
personalised medicines on a relatively large scale in certain countries without specific prescription, for example, to supply hospital pharmacies with the most commonly prescribed personalised medicines. For traditional pharmaceutical companies, including manufacturers of generic medicines, such a batch of medicines is generally too small to offer in a cost-effective manner.
Sterile and non-sterile In a compounded medicine, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) or existing commercial medicines are mixed or incorporated in an administration form. Pharmaceutical
compounded medicine can be non-sterile as well as sterile.
Non-sterile products include tablets, capsules, liquids, suppositories,creams, ointments and suspensions. Sterile products are usually medicines that are administered through injection or infusion and that come with a higher risk of infection and other negative side effects.

Examples of sterile pharmaceutical compounded medicine are injections packaged in syringes, vials, ampoules and IV bags.