Child resistant drug packaging and arthritis: Can older consumers access their medications?

摘要

The ability of 100 subjects, 50 with a self-indicated doctor's diagnosis of arthritis with hand involvement and 50 controls matched for age and gender, to open a variety of types and sizes of child resistant packages was tested. Ninety participants were female and 10 were males. Overall, participants took an average of 7.8 medications daily and 88% of the participants opened their own medications. Over 30% of the subjects were unaware that they could request their medication in non-CR format from the pharmacist.; Three types of closure systems (Push and Turn, Squeeze Lok, and Continuous Thread) with different finish sizes were tested for opening, number of successful openings and time to open were the analyzed results. Of the 10 different containers tested, NONE were opened by all subjects. Furthermore, among the 6 child-resistant (CR) containers, 5 containers had 25 or more people fail to open the containers, compared to non-CR containers which had no more than 10 people fail in each of the 4 designs. In addition, participants took on average, a longer time to open the CR containers than the non-CR containers. The shortest mean opening time among the CR containers was approximately 65% longer than the shortest mean opening time among the containers without CR features.; The impact of hand strength and size on number of openings, time to open, and time to close was also explored and is discussed.