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We understand the human body and its functions far more now than compared to a hundred years ago. This knowledge, combined with advancements in biology and chemistry, has dramatically increased the power of curative treatment. As humans, we’ve created treatments for diseases which were previously fatal and have outright cured a few along the way, too. But there’s still a long way to go.
Treating pain is an excellent example of exactly how much and how little science knows about medicine. No single pain treatment works for everyone, and science still doesn’t fully understand the subtle neurological differences in pain perception — but they’re making progress.
Treating chronic pain is especially complicated. Medical conditions may interact with each other, often in unexpected ways, and that makes diagnosing and addressing the pain a real challenge. Certain conditions may also contraindicate or disallow the use of specific medicines, either together or individually, significantly reducing available options.
Fortunately, there is an option: compounded pain medication.
Compounded Pain Medication Facts
Compounding refers to the process of stripping a medication down to its base elements and then reformulating it, either to better suit the patient or to reduce associated risks (like allergies). Through compounding, pharmacists can target treatments much more effectively with fewer side effects and easier medication use, and that results in improved patient compliance.
When treating chronic pain, your medical care team may suggest compounded pain medication as a reasonable solution. Here are five of the many benefits that compounded pain medication has to offer.
1. Combination Medications
For every form of pain — neuropathic pain, muscle pain, fascial pain, visceral or organ pain, and cancer pain, for example — there’s a particular drug that bests targets the pain. Some medications may work only on one type of pain, while others address many. If you experience more than one type of pain, combination medications can help you resolve it with fewer doses and fewer side effects.
Often, combination drugs offer pure and simple convenience. Rather than having to keep track of every pill, you only need to keep track of one or two doses instead.
Sometimes, doctors prescribe combination medications because they know the drugs work together efficiently to produce a better outcome. This is the case with certain nausea drugs, topicals to treat skin conditions, and many allergy formulas.
2. Better Dosage Level Control
Managing dosage is one of your pharmacist’s most important jobs. That’s especially true for pain relievers due to the high risk of side effects and tolerance. Some drugs, like NSAIDs, can cause severe and devastating stomach issues if taken excessively by mouth. Compounding these drugs into a non-oral form or topical solution reduces strain on your stomach and other sensitive organs.
Some patients may need more pain relief, yet the doctor may be hesitant to increase narcotics dosage due to the risk of addiction or sedation. Compounded topical numbing agents, usually applied by patch, cream, or gel, may enhance the patient’s narcotic by relieving surface and subdermal pain. It isn’t an actual fix, but it acts like a slight boost on the worst days. This approach is especially useful for patients with musculoskeletal issues.
Other patients, including children and pets (yes, compounding works for pets, too!) may be especially susceptible to dosage adjustments. Commercially-available pills may not come in doses low enough or specific enough for treatment. In the case of children, creating liquid solutions containing just enough painkiller is the best way to achieve effective pain control without side effects or sedation.
3. Easier Dosing Formats
Very sick patients often take multiple medications and may struggle with bitter drugs, large pills, or painful injections. Changing the intake method noticeably improves quality of life for these patients. In some cases, it may even be necessary — any parent who’s had to convince a child to take a bitter antibiotic liquid knows this first-hand.
Through compounding, the pharmacist can do the following:
- add flavoring
- change a pill to an injectable
- change an injectable to a topical
- create dissolvable lozenges that require less effort to swallow
Compounded pain medication is ideal for the following types of people:
- little ones who balk at medicine
- patients who are very weak
- patients with oral cancers
- anyone else who struggles with their current dosing format
4. Wider Range of Treatment Options
As mentioned further up, sometimes medical conditions can seriously limit a patient’s medication options. Moreover, there are situations where plain oral pills aren’t even the best choice due to efficacy.
For example, topical creams and gels work far better for treating pain within the surface of the skin, such as at the site of nerve trauma, than narcotics. They work by turning nerve signals from the area off (if only temporary). Products containing a topical NSAID also show serious improvement for patients undergoing a Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) flare, with an onset time of around 30 to 60 minutes — pills often take much longer to “kick in.”
Patients with weakness, such as those who are recovering from stroke, may benefit from a dosage format change because they lack the ability to swallow pills at all. Others, including patients who have neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s Disease, may present a swallowing risk. Thus, topical or injectable works far better.
Overall, because compounding is so precise, it can be used in place of or beside other treatment modalities. The patient has more options for treatment regardless of case complexity.
5. Necessary for Hospice Patients
Hospice presents specialized pain control needs and very specific difficulties in achieving pain treatment goals. End-of-life care is inordinately complicated; medical professionals much achieve pain control without over-sedating the patient or causing secondary illness via overdose, all while determining how to dose a half-conscious or fully unconscious patient. Further complicating the issue is the fact that hospice patients often demand very high doses of medicine — higher even than what may be available commercially.
Determining how to achieve pain control goals in hospice is, for these reasons and many more, almost always difficult. Most hospice patients cannot, or will not, take medication orally. Injectable solutions, topical creams, and patches help caregivers and family members to ensure that the patient’s needs are met with as much dignity, respect, and safety as possible.
In Conclusion
For patients who need individualized pain management tools, compounding really can shine a bright light on brand new treatment options. Whether it’s the freedom to live comfortably, the ability to reduce the total number of doses per day, better dosage control, or easier dosage formats, compounded pain medication can enable you to better treat your pain. If you have questions about your pain treatment, speak with your physician or pharmacist to see if compounding is right for you.