Comment from Anonymous
AnonymousSupportIndividual
Summary: A veterinary professional argues that compounding is essential for providing tailored medications to animals, especially when commercial products are not feasible due to size, allergies, or patient compliance issues. The commenter requests that specific medications commonly used in small animal hospitals be considered for the list of bulk drug substances for compounding.
As a veterinary professional 13 years in the field, I understand the push for more individualized and tailored medications so that they're more compliant and there's not as much room for error.
That being said, animals are on a different spectrum of medical care. We cannot convince a cat to willingly take a pill. We can't rationalize with a dog to not spit up his life saving medication. Compounding allows us to offer the best care to our patients in order to result in the best compliance. We can make recommendations to owners until we're blue in the face, but if an easier alternative is not readily available, the patient will ultimately suffer.
Additionally, we have a lot of patients who have food allergies and cannot take the commercial product or need very small specific doses. We often run into things like having to quarter a 3mm wide pill, which just isn't feasible.
The medications that we often compound at our small animal hospital in the metropolitan Houston area are things like doxycycline, gabapentin, famciclovir, metronidazole. Please consider this when editing the list of restricted medications.