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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Republished July 31, 2024Many medicines come in different strengths. For example, a medicine may come in both a 10 mg and a 20 mg tablet. Surprisingly, the higher dose often costs about the same as the lower dose. If the medicine is too expensive for some people, doctors may prescribe the higher dose and direct them to take half a tablet for each dose. However, splitting tablets may be risky for several reasons.First, it is easy to become confused about the correct dose. For example, a woman was admitted to the hospital with heart and blood pressure problems. Her doctor found that she had been taking the wrong dose of her blood pressure medicine, lisinopril. She was supposed to be taking 5 mg twice a day, but the label on her prescription bottle said there were 10 mg tablets inside.Initially, the woman had been taking a 20 mg tablet twice a day. When her doctor lowered the dose to 10 mg, she had the new prescription filled. But she cut the leftover 20 mg tablets in half and put them in the same bottle that held the 10 mg tablets. Later, her doctor lowered the dose to 5 mg twice a day. Instead of filling the new prescription for 5 mg tablets, she tried to find all the 10 mg tablets to split them in half, but some remained whole. No one could be certain of the dose the woman had been taking before she was hospitalized.The accuracy of splitting tablets is also questionable. Some halves may have more medicine, others have less medicine, even if the tablet is scored (a depressed line in the center of a tablet that helps you split the tablet). Split tablets also crumble more easily, so there may be less medicine in the half
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