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Real Life Pharmacology - Pharmacology Education for Health Care Professionals

Scopolamine Pharmacology

Real Life Pharmacology - Pharmacology Education for Health Care Professionals

Eric Christianson, PharmD; Pharmacology Expert and Clinical Pharmacist

Education, Health & Fitness, Medicine

5716 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of the RLP podcast, I discuss scopolamine pharmacology.



Scopolamine patches can be used in the management of motion sickness and surgery/anesthesia induced nausea and vomiting.



Transdermal scopolamine has a slow onset of action so we need to be deliberate about the timing of placement (usually 4-6 hours prior to anticipated time of symptoms).



Transdermal scopolamine is highly anticholinergic and can cause dry eyes, dry mouth, urinary retention, and confusion.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist Eric Christensen,

0:06.1

and I thank you so much for listening today. If you are looking for a free 31-page PDF,

0:12.3

definitely go check out real-life pharmacology.com. It's a top 200 study guide where I lay out the most important and relevant clinical pearls

0:24.3

as well as those things that come up on pharmacology exams on a regular basis there.

0:31.3

So definitely go take advantage of that free resource simply for subscribing.

0:44.0

We'll send you updates as to when we've got new podcasts available and new content as well.

0:52.9

All right, so the drug of the day today is scopolamine and specifically transdermal scopolamine.

0:55.2

Now this is classified as an anticholonergic medication, and its primary use is the

1:03.0

prevention of nausean vomiting, and that could be due to a couple of reasons.

1:08.9

Most common reason I've seen this medication used in clinical practice

1:13.6

is for motion sickness, but it can also be used for nausea and vomiting associated with

1:20.8

anesthesia or general surgery. Now, how does this medication work?

1:29.2

Again, being an anticholinergic medication, it's going to block muscarinic receptors, possibly also has some an antihistamine-type activity, and it's going to block the action of acetylene, which can ultimately cause some drying up of secretions,

1:52.0

slow down the gut, and potentially provide some relief for nausea and vomiting,

1:58.5

which is what we're going to primarily use this medication for.

2:05.1

Adverse effect profile. So let's talk about this a little bit, because this gives me the

2:11.3

perfect example of explaining the prescribing cascade.

2:18.8

So adverse effects, knowing that it's an anti-colonergic medication,

2:24.8

what you're going to see is dry mouth, dry eyes, potentially constipation,

2:30.0

and urinary retention.

2:32.9

In addition, there might be some sedation, confusion, fall risk.

2:38.8

That's more so probably in our geriatric population. So let's talk about that prescribing cascade.

...

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