On today's episode of real-life pharmacology, I'm going to cover hydrocodone and acetaminopin.

Common brand names here, Norco, Lortab, Vicodin that you may see providers and other health

care professionals use interchangeably there. There is some slight differences there,

but in general you want to understand what the dose of hydrocodone is,

as well as acetaminophen.

Most common dosages there is hydrocodone 5 milligrams with 325 milligrams of acetaminophen or 10 milligrams of hydrocodone with

acetaminophen, 325 milligrams.

Now hydrocodone is an opioid.

So its mechanism of action is it is a mu-opioid receptor agonist.

That's how it has its activity as far as analgesic relief.

And in rare cases, I can't say I see it used very often clinically,

but in rare cases you may see it used as an antitussive to suppress cough.

With hydrocodone, we've also got acetaminopin combination.

I'm not going to talk about acetaminopin at length here.

You've just got to remember to really educate your patients about that acetaminophen at length here. You've just got to remember to really educate your

patients about that acetaminophen component and if patients are taking regularly scheduled

acetaminophen for pain relief and or if they are using other combination products with

acetaminophen, we have to remember that

this combination can add to that effect.

So again, I talk about acetaminophen in a totally separate podcast that's already been done,

so I'll refer you back to that one to get a little bit more detail on acetaminophen specifically.

So let's get into adverse effects a little bit because there certainly are quite a few

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