Unused drugs

Urges the patient and family to discard any unused drug once dierapy is discontinued or completed. 

Viani, Lisa Owens. Don t Flush the Ambien Environmentally-Friendly Prescription Drug Disposal, San Mateo County, Calif. Utne Reader 146 (March/April, 2008) 82. To help protect water supplies and landfills from leakage of disposed prescription drugs, San Mateo has devised some environmentally friendly methods of disposal. According to the article, the country has set up a drop-off system for unused drugs and hopes other counties will adopt similar programs. 

The experimental study investigator is under obligation to use the drug only according to the protocol, report immediately any serious adverse reactions, provide a report of the study, return all unused drugs still in his procession, maintain all records for at least two years after the conclusion of the tests, report on the disposition of the experimental animals and account for all quantities of the drug received by him. 

Stock management Returned drugs management Returning unused drug to sponsor Feeding computer records of activity... 

Destruction of the returned or unused drug samples through a suitable procedure... 

As an example, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has recently issued a solicitation for testing their older and unused drug candidates for new purposes. For example. AZT was in the NCI drug archive and later found new use as the best therapeutic for HI V/AIDS. 

PARENTERAL ADMINISTRATION. The nurse should read the manufacturer s package insert for each drug for instructions regarding reconstitution of powder for injection, storage of unused portions, life of the drug after it is reconstituted, methods of IV administration, and precautions to be taken when the drug is administered. 

Vancomycin. The nurse can administer vancomycin orally or by intermittent IV infusion. This drug is not administered IM. Unused portions of reconstituted oral suspensions and parenteral solutions are stable for 14 days when refrigerated after reconstitution. 

Although the drug is most often administered orally, warfarin injection may be used as an alternative route for patients who are unable to receive oral drag. The intravenous dosage is the same as that for the oral drug. Intravenous warfarin is administered as a slow bolus injection during a period of 1 to 2 minutes. Warfarin is not recommended for intramuscular injection. After the drug is reconstituted, it is stable for 4 hours at room temperature. The vial is not recommended for multiple use, and any unused solution should be discarded. 

True. Even clean and unused needles and syringes can be dangerous in the wrong hands. A used needle and syringe can be especially dangerous as it may contain blood, bacteria, drugs or viruses. 

Pharmacists should also take a dim view of changes in the particle size, size distribution, or particulate nature of semisolid suspensions. They are the consequence of crystal growth, changes in crystalline habit, or the reversion of the crystalline materials to a more stable polymorphic form. Any crystalline alteration can lead to a pronounced reduction in the drug-delivery capabilities and therapeutic utility of a formulation. Thus, products exhibiting such changes are seriously physically unstable and unusable. 

Physicians who have drug problems sometimes use a process called harvesting in order to obtain the medications for their own personal use. Harvesting occurs when a physician (seemingly innocendy) asks a patient to return any unused pain or other type of mood-altering medications to the physician. The physician will tell a patient that this is for his or her protection to take away the threat of accidental use of the medicines by someone in the household. The physician will offer to dispose of the medicine properly so that it is out of the household. However, the medicines will likely be used by the physician instead of being wasted. Patients should understand that since they have paid for (or their insurance has paid for) those medicines, it is unethical for a physician to ask for them in the first place, and such a request should warn of a problem. 

Other anthropogenic contamination sources, such as disposal of unused or expired drugs or pharmaceutical industry discharges, should be assumed [26-30]. 

On the other hand, disposal of leftover drugs into sewers has received considerable attention since few years ago, in Europe, take-back schemes for unused or... 

Persson M, Sabelstrom E, Gunnarsson B (2009) Handling of unused prescription drugs -knowledge, behaviour and attitude among Swedish people. Environ Int 35 771-774... 

Unless there are specific instructions in the protocol to the contrary, there should be a clearly documented trail of the drugs supplies that came in, what was administered to the subjects and what was returned by the subject in terms of unused medication. Any relaxation of drug accountability, as is seen sometimes in a multicentre study of many thousand subjects, can cause problems in monitoring the correct formulations and dosages given to the subjects. The significance of the... 

Preparation Do not shake. Do not dilute. Do not administer darbepoetin in conjunction with other drug solutions. Darbepoetin is packaged in single-use vials and contains no preservatives. Discard any unused portion. Do not pool unused portions. 

Adalimumab does not contain preservatives — unused portions of drug should be discarded... 

---