Liquid Drugs for Dysphagia Sufferers

8 July, 2011 (11:23) | Health | By: Felix

A lot of patients receiving medical treatment have difficulties swallowing drugs. Dysphagia can be found in all age brackets though it is most common in the very young and the aged. Older people have more difficulties with the problem because of changes to the saliva glands when they age. Studies have shown that around 1/3 of all care home residents suffer from Dysphagia which makes caring for their health and wellbeing more difficult and time-consuming. The complications Dysphagia brings about can be severe because it interferes with medicine management as well as medication management if the affected individual has got difficulties swallowing tablets. Any time tablets are taken orally they can sometimes result in a blockage and result in choking. There is also a danger that pills can become lodged in the throat which may lead to the incorrect dispersal of the medication to the body and also possible injury to the oesophagus. Up till now the most common method of managing the difficulties that Dysphagia presents has been tablet crushing in order to make medication easier to swallow. However crushing tablets isn’t the easy answer it appears to be and it can effect the way the medication works within the body. Some drugs are sugar coated to make them taste better and while crushing them might not change the way the tablet works it will make them taste very unpleasant. Pills with an enteric coating should never be crushed before they are taken since the coating is made to keep the pill together in the stomach to either; protect the stomach from the medication, protect the medicine from the stomach or to release the medicine soon after it’s left the stomach. Fortunately there’s a solution for people with Dysphagia and the people who care for them. The worth of liquid medications when treating patients with Dysphagia has been recognised by the healthcare community and has resulted in calls for a bigger range of liquid medicines to be created. There are a number of drugs that oral liquid drugs may be used to replace and the quantity keeps growing all the time. Liquid medicines are very easy to swallow and also are available in a number of different flavours.