About Compounded Medications

What is compounding? 

Compounding is the pharmaceutical process of making a custom medication through mixing, combining or altering certain ingredients.

What is a compounded medication?

Compounded medication is a tool doctors can use to address a patient’s individual needs when a standard drug preparation wouldn’t be as appropriate or effective. Reasons for prescribing include:

• Customizing combinations and dosage to meet unique needs like allergies and tolerance
• Blending drugs to match the effects of a limited or unavailable medication
• Combining more than one medication into a single dose for convenience

While compounded medications can be used for many purposes, they are especially common in certain fields.

Dermatologists rely on compounding to get topical prescriptions just right — everyone’s skin is different. Pain specialists use compounding to tailor prescriptions to tolerance levels and address different types of pain. Endocrinologists can use compounding to match hormone therapies to a patient’s unique hormone needs, and more. Veterinarians, too use compounding to match dosage to patient size. 

Who is responsible for compounded medications? 

Doctors prescribe compounded medications. Specially-trained pharmacists prepare the prescription at a pharmacy equipped to perform compounding. Most pharmacies offer some level of compounding. For more complex needs, the prescription may go to a specialized compounding pharmacy, which would be staffed with compounding specialists and specialized equipment to formulate a wide variety of drugs. 

Sona Pharmacy Compounding

At Sona Compounding, we are happy to provide compounding services for our patients. Our goal is to offer the custom medications you need in the most cost-effective, convenient way possible. We’ll work together with you and your doctor to find the solution that works best for your individual needs.

To learn more about Sona Pharmacy Compounding and compounded medications in general, refer to the following resources: 

Compounding Pharmacies: The Top 5 Questions — This blog post by a Sona Compounding Pharmacist answers the most common questions we get here at Sona Pharmacy about compounding. 

Sona Compounding Pharmacy — This is our homepage for Sona Compounding here in Asheville, North Carolina. Here, you’ll find instructions for sending us your compounded prescriptions and ordering refills. We also discuss some of the most common compounding use cases we see here at the pharmacy:

• Compounding for pets
• Anti-aging compounds
• Bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (HRT)
• Compounding for children
• Dermatological compounding

An Overview of Compounding — Looking for something a little more in-depth? The National Library of Medicine published this article on pharmaceutical compounding in 2020. It covers various compounding types and settings, how pharmacists approach formulation, training and oversight, and the general compounding market.