INDICES> Thiamine

["Joe Talmud" <JTALMUD@uctgsh1.uct.ac.za>]

Greetings!
Can anyone enlighten us? 

A hospital pharmacy makes TPN bags 
containing amongst other ingredients thiamine hydrochloride . They 
draw up 1ml from a multidose vial which contains 2 parabens as 
preservatives and add it to the rest of the mixture in a litre bag. 
The vial from which the thiamine is taken says for IM or SC use only. 
No ampoules of thiamine (unpreserved) are available in South Africa.

Question: Is the presence of the preservatives irrelevant as they 
become so diluted as not to be of any significance, or is the 
problem with the thiamine which can be irritant/allergenic? 

We don't know the formula for the thiamine injection except to say 
that it is not labelled BP (the BP 1993 says that thiamine injection 
contains thiamine in water for injection only).

P.S. Some of our hospitals making TPN daily use the thiamine from the 
multidose vial..they hadn't read (or ignored)the label that says for 
IM/SC use only.

Joe Talmud
Medicines Information Centre
Dept Pharmacology
UCT Medical School
K Floor, Old Main Building, Groote Schuur Hospital,
Observatory 7925
South Africa
Phone 021-4066427
e-mail  jtalmud@uctgsh1.uct.ac.za


--
Send mail for the `INDICES' conference to `indices@usa.healthnet.org'.
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to:  `owner-indices@usa.healthnet.org'.