Abstract

PHARMACEUTICAL SUSPENSIONS: PATIENT COMPLIANCE ORAL DOSAGE FORMS

*R. Santosh Kumar and T. Naga Satya Yagnesh

ABSTRACT

A pharmaceutical suspension is a coarse dispersion of insoluble solid particles in a liquid medium. The particle diameter in a suspension is usually greater than 0.5 μm. However, it is difficult and also impractical to impose a sharp boundary between the suspensions and the dispersions having finer particles. Suspensions are an important class of pharmaceutical dosage forms. The advantages of suspension dosage forms include effective dispensing of hydrophobic drugs; avoidance of the use of cosolvents; masking of unpleasant taste of certain ingredients; offering resistance to degradation of drugs due to hydrolysis, oxidation or microbial activity; easy swallowing for young or elderly patients; and efficient intramuscular depot therapy. In addition, when compared to solution dosage forms, relatively higher concentration of drugs can be incorporated into suspension products. The present review provides an overview of various aspects of suspensions such as classification of suspensions, theories of suspensions, various suspending agents, formulations aspects of suspensions, packaging of suspensions, evaluation of suspensions, stability of suspensions and recent research work that is being carried on suspensions.

Keywords: Suspensions, Suspending agents, Evaluation, Stability.