Some people are incapable of swallowing tablets because of physical reasons, such as surgery or gastric reflux, while others struggle for psychological reasons. What can these people do when the doctor prescribes a drug that comes in tablet form?
The standard tablet is designed to be swallowed whole. Once in the stomach, it absorbs water, which causes it to swell and break apart. As it breaks apart, the drug dissolves over a predictable period of time, gets absorbed into the bloodstream and moves around the body.
Some people end up chewing tablets or crushing them up and mixing them with their food, but this can sometimes cause the medicine to not work properly. In some cases, ingesting a crushed tablet can even result in death.
Important clues
For a number of reasons some tablets shouldn’t be crushed or chewed. Most importantly, doing so may result in dose dumping; this is when the body very quickly absorbs a large amount of a drug. One consequence of dose dumping is an overdose of the drug, which can lead to death.
Some tablets also come with a special protective layer, called an enteric coating, which is designed to stop it from breaking apart in the stomach. The coating ensures the tablet disintegrates in the small intestine instead. If you chew an enterically coated tablet, the drug will not be absorbed properly and the medicine may be ineffective.
Tablets designed to be chewed have this indicated on their packaging. This is common for drugs designed for young children and certain types of tablets such as multivitamins. For the full article click here
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