Compounding for veterinary medicine

As challenging as it can sometimes be to determine appropriate forms of medicines that assure compliance by humans, doing so for veterinary patients is even more challenging. Most human patients can communicate their preferences and tolerances; for example, those with swallowing problems can report their difficulties with oral dosage forms, and most children react unmistakably to unpalatable flavors or the prospect of an injection. Animal patients, however, must communicate by way of their behovioral reactions to a dosage form, as their verbalization capabilities are limited to their species. Dosing veterinary patients requires imagination and ingenuity from a compounding pharmacist. This brief summary, along with the featured case report, examines some of the challenges that veterinary compounding pharmacists face.