Opinion
What Happens When the Right Doctor Chooses the Wrong Drug
Exploring your Doctors’ dilemma when it comes to prescribing
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A risky decision
The prescription in front of me was for a drug used to treat glaucoma — a situation where the fluid pressure within the eye is high enough to cause damage to the optical nerve. Untreated, patients eventually go blind.
But the patient was 7 years old and in 20 plus years of working as a pharmacist, I’d never experienced such a situation.
I knew the child, he was a smart, bespectacled little gentleman, his earnest face and steady gaze was better suited for a much older child. It was hard to believe he needed to be on what would normally be an older person’s medication.
His father was not convinced.
“Mitch, I don’t want to give my son that.” He pointed to the prescription. I could understand why, the father himself used the same drug and he didn’t want to give it to his child.
To be honest, I didn’t want to dispense it either, but I’d looked through the Product Information, and the PI didn’t say anything about age restricted use.
