Welcome to Helix Talk, an educational podcast for healthcare students and providers covering real-life clinical pearls, professional pharmacy topics, and drug therapy discussions.

This podcast is provided by pharmacists and faculty members at Rosal Franklin University College of Pharmacy.

This podcast contains general information for educational purposes only. This is not

professional advice and should not be used in lieu of obtaining advice from a qualified health

care provider. And now on to the show. Welcome to Helix Talk episode 48. I'm your co-host, Dr.

Kaine. I'm Dr. Schumann. And I'm Dr. Patel. And we once again have Dr. Lauren Angelo with us because we're going to continue talking

about some of those over-the-counter recommendation on common cold, nasal congestion, and

cough products.

Wonderful to be here.

Thank you for inviting me back.

Thank you again.

So Dr. Angela, when we see a patient who's presenting to a pharmacy with symptoms of nasal

congestion, what are some of the questions that should immediately come to our mind before

we're recommending over-the-counterproduct therapy?

First and foremost, it's important to figure out what's causing the congestion.

It can be a variety of things.

The common cold obviously is the first thing we might think about, but could it also be the flu?

Or what about allergies, which we'll talk about in a little bit, or even bacterial sinusitis if the condition has been going on for some time.

Pregnancy is another option that can cause congestion, so we'd want to be careful in that regard.

And of course, you know, depending on, you know, are we trying to treat the symptoms or in the case

of allergy, treat the cause, like our treatment can vary based on what the presumed causative,

you know, reason is for the congestion in the first place.

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