About Rickey Mallory Expertise I am a registered pharmacist and a writer, with a special interest in herbs and herbal medicines.I have 27 years of pharmaceutical, general medicine, and hospital experience as well as an extensive reference library of resources of various herbal and homeopathic treatments and remedies from Biblical times to the present.Contact me for personal questions as well as research for your books and stories.
Experience I have 27 years experience in hospital pharmacy, including 15 years as a supervisor and manager, with special qualifications in Quality Assurance and policies and procedures related to managing a large, teaching medical center.I also am a writer of both nonfiction and fiction, with over 12 years experience in fiction writing.I am published in nonfiction and fiction. B.S. in Pharmacy 12 hours toward MFA, 1990 to present. I have received numerous awards for my fiction, both short and novel length.I received yearly awards for my performance in hospital pharmacy management.
Question Is the piroxicam in a 1.5 mg capsule exactly the same as the piroxicam powder in a 10 mg capsule? I ask because I am paying $70.00 for #60 1.5 mg at an online pharmacy and I know I could pay under $10.00 for #60 of a more standard 10 mg capsule size. Couldn't I just buy the less expensive 10 mg and weigh it out to 1.5 mg? Am I getting scammed?
Thank you.
Answer It's difficult to say if you're getting 'scammed.' I actually doubt it.
The problem with odd doses (I'm assuming this dose is for a child or someone particularly sensitive to the drug?) is that it is time-consuming, and takes special documentation as well as training to prepare special capsules.
Unless you have specialized equipment, you would have a very hard time measuring out a 1.5mg dose from the contents of a 10mg capsule. There are 6.66666666666 (this goes on for a long time!) doses in one 10mg capsule. As you can probably tell from the size of the 10mg capsule, there's not a lot of powder in there.
Another problem you must consider is that the active ingredient is already mixed with a diluent (sometimes lactose) because the actual weight of 10mg of piroxicam powder may be a very small quantity. And the contents may have settled in the capsule. So you need to make sure the contents are mixed well before trying to separate them into parts.
The way a compounding pharmacist would probably do this is to add more diluent to reach an easily weighable amount. So that for instance there is 1.5 mg of piroxicam mixed in each 20mg of powder. Then he/she would stuff capsules (in a clean environment) and weigh them until the capsule holds 20 mg of total powder (which contains 1.5 mg of active ingredient.)
As you see, this is not a simple calculation or maneuver.
I have checked to see if there is a liquid form of piroxicam, but there apparently isn't.
the only thing I can recommend is for you to talk with your pharmacist if the $70.00 is creating a hardship financially.
