Current opinions and recommendations of paediatric healthcare professionals - The importance of tablets:Emerging orally disintegrating versus traditional tablets

Abstract

The appropriate prescribing of paediatric dosage forms is paramount in providing the desired therapeutic effect alongside successful medication adherence with the paediatric population. Often it is the opinion of the healthcare practitioner that dictates which type of dosage form would be most appropriate for the paediatric patient, with liquids being both the most commonly available and most commonly used. Orally disintegrating tablets (ODTs) are an emerging dosage form which provide many benefits over traditional dosage forms for paediatric patients, such as rapid disintegration within the oral cavity, and the reduction in the risk of choking. However the opinion and professional use of healthcare practitioners regarding ODT's is not known. This study was designed to assess the opinions of several types of healthcare professionals (n = 41) regarding ODTs, using a survey across two hospital sites. Results reaffirmed the popularity of liquids for prescribing in paediatrics, with 58.0% of participants preferring this dosage form. ODTs emerged as the second most popular dosage form (30.0%), with healthcare practitioners indicating an increasing popularity amongst patients in the hospital setting, belief with 63.0% of practitioners agreeing that many liquid formulations could be substituted with a suitable ODT. The desired properties of an ideal ODT were also identified by healthcare practitioners preferring a small, fast disintegrating tablet (90.2% and 95.1% respectively), with the taste, disintegration time and flavour being the three most important attributes identified (29.5%, 28.7% and 21.7% respectively). This study provided a pragmatic approach in assessing healthcare professional's opinions on ODTs, highlighting the ideas and thoughts of practitioners who are on the frontline of paediatric prescribing and treatment and gave an indication to their preference for ODT properties.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193292
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > Aston Pharmacy School
College of Health & Life Sciences
College of Health & Life Sciences > Chronic and Communicable Conditions
Additional Information: © 2018 Alyami et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Publication ISSN: 1932-6203
Last Modified: 08 Jan 2024 08:41
Date Deposited: 09 Mar 2018 13:30
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://journals ... al.pone.0193292 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2018-02-28
Accepted Date: 2018-01-30
Authors: Alyami, Hamad
Koner, Jasdip
Huynh, Chi (ORCID Profile 0000-0001-6982-6642)
Terry, David (ORCID Profile 0000-0001-7599-0916)
Mohammed, Afzal R. (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-5212-3040)

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