Vial washers for the compounding pharmacy: ensuring preparation safety

The safety and effectiveness of customized formulations have always been priorities for compounding pharmacists, perhaps even more so since a tragic outbreak of meningitis in 2012 was traced to preparations from the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts. Since that time, pharmaceutical compounding in the U.S. has been the focus of renewed interest from the public and from government organizations and regulatory bodies created to ensure patient safety. As a result, responsible compounders have responded to ensure--to even greater levels--the purity and safety of the formulations they prepare. One tool useful in doing so is the mechanical vial washer, which can produce cleaner vials (and/or ampules, syringes, and cartridges, depending on the washer model) more consistently than does washing vessels by hand. In this article, several such washers appropriate for use in a compounding pharmacy are profiled, and a pharmacist's experience in using one of those models is described.