Pill Splitting: How to Correctly Split a PillThis pill splitting article describes how researchers at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Asheville, N.C., studied patients to determine how effectively they were able to cut various types of splittable pills, and whether arthritis, a common disorder of aging, hampered that ability. Arthritis did not turn out to be a significant factor. They next decided to evaluate two different types of pill splitters and whether instructing the users how to correctly use the pill splitters improved accuracy. Fourteen tablets of different sizes and shapes were used in the study. Split pills were weighed, and it was determined that regardless of the instruction involved, patients' tablet-splitting resulted in dosage deviations between 9 percent and 37 percent from those intended. It was also stated that deviations of 10% may not be significant for some medicines, but would be unsatisfactory for certain medicines such as Warfarin, a powerful blood thinner. Click on the link below to read the complete original article.
|