What is a Compounding Pharmacy - Robert Seik, PharmD

Compounding pharmacies take prescriptions from physicians and make products that are not commercially available by using the active pharmaceutical ingredient. These prescriptions are customized specifically to what the patient needs.

What is a compounding pharmacy? Robert Seik, PharmD, is trained in functional and rejuvenative medicine and owns Partell Specialty Pharmacy, which is a compounding pharmacy in Las Vegas. He explains exactly what compounding pharmacies are and what they do.

The original way medications were prepared were with a mortar and pestle and specific ingredients were made for each individual. The ingredients included were only what the person needed and designed specifically for that person's needs. It's only been in recent history where manufactured drugs have become the primary therapy. Compounding pharmacies have always been there.

Compounding pharmacies take prescriptions from physicians and make products that are often not commercially available by using the active pharmaceutical ingredient. These prescriptions are customized specifically to what the patient needs.

For example, a physician can write for a multi-ingredient cream that is applied to the skin to treat for an area of pain. Perhaps this patient is unable to tolerate oral medication, so a topical cream can be made with superb absorption, using only the necessary ingredients, without added toxic chemicals and fillers and with the person's specific allergies in mind.

You can also have compound hormone therapy that may not be offered commercially like bio-identical hormone therapy with the exact dosages needed for that particular person. So, customized hormone therapy to order; exactly what the patient's blood or saliva test showed the deficiency to be.

Creams, capsules, gels, sublingual troche, specialized eardrops and eyedrops can all be made. They can also make sterilized products with their sophisticated clean room that allows products to be sterilized, which is highly regulated. Sterilized injectables such as nutrients, Vitamin D, CoQ10, high dose B12 as methylcobalamin, which is not commercially available, can all be made at a compounding pharmacy. Certain products can be made preservative-free or gluten-free. It is important to know that many commercially available products contain preservatives, gluten and other added fillers that may or may not be safe for the patient.

PCCA, Professional Compounding Centers of America, is where Partell Pharmacy purchases many of their active ingredients. It is highly specialized and many compounds are made on site with highly sophisticated equipment, so it takes many more personnel to run a compounding pharmacy. You can go to Partell Pharmacy's web site to see photos of the compounding pharmacy and to learn more.

by Robert Seik, PharmD