5 Anti-inflammatory drugs Introduction Inflammation is the body’s response mechanism to cellular damage. Without the inflammatory response our bodies could not survive. Therefore, inflammation is a protective mechanism designed to…
6 Anticoagulant therapy Introduction Blood clotting is a normal homeostatic mechanism, the purpose of which is to prevent the loss of blood from the cardiovascular system and to ensure that…
2 Adverse drug reactions and interactions Introduction The aim of this chapter is to introduce you to the concepts of adverse drug reactions and drug interactions and side-effects. According to the…
9 Patient concordance Introduction Medicines that are prescribed but not taken by patients represent a large loss in drug and prescribing costs and an enormous waste of expensive health professionals’…
10 Legal and professional issues Introduction The aim of this chapter is to introduce you to the legal and professional issues faced by nurses in medicines management. Nurses are bound…
Understanding acid and base behaviour is extremely important, not only because of the sheer number of ionisable drug substances but because the solubility of an acidic or basic drug substance…
While it is tempting to assume that all drug products are financial blockbusters, approximately 70% never generate sufficient sales to recoup their development costs. Table 1.2 shows the top 20…
Acids and bases can be classified as strong through to extremely weak, based on their pKa (Table 6.3). When strong acids react with strong bases the reaction tends to completion,…
Long-term 25 ± 2 °C and 60 ± 5% RH 30 ± 2 °C and 65 ± 5% RH 12 months Intermediate 30 ± 2 °C and 65 ± 5%…
7.2.2 Crystal growth from solution Crystals may grow from solution but this requires that the initial concentration be supersaturated (i.e. above its solubility). Study question 7.1 Why must the solution…
