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Physicians often prescribe doses of medication that necessitate the breaking of tablets into halves. To deter mine whether halved tablets contain accurate doses, we broke apart 100 tablets each of 5 commonly used drugs: Chloroquin (chloroquine, Indian Drugs and Pharmaceu ticals Ltd.); Daonil (glibenclamide, Hoechst Ltd.); EuglU-con (glibenclamide, Boehringer-Knoll Ltd.); Lasix (frusemide, Hoechst Ltd.); and Reglan (metoclopramide, CFL Pharmaceuticals Ltd., India). For each of the 5 drugs, 100 intact tablets were weighed individually on an elec tronic scale. The tablets were then manually broken in" half, and each of the resulting pieces was weighed indi vidually. The ideal weight of a tablet half was taken to be half of the mean weight of one whole tablet. The tablet halves were grouped into ranges based on the percent age by which the actual weight deviated from the ideal weight.

The results are shown in the table. The round tablets that were scored on one side only broke unevenly with large deviations in weight. The elongated tablets that were scored deeply on both sides broke cleanly; few halves deviated by more than 10% from the ideal weight. The smallest tablet (Reglan) was most difficult to break accurately. Weight loss from fragmentation and powder ing was appreciable for the round tablets but was negli-'gible for the elongated tablets. To improve the ability of tablets to be broken into, halves, we suggest that tablets be elongated in shape, be scored deeply on both sides, and be large enough to permit a firm grip on each end. However, we believe that truly accurate doses can be ensured only if tablets are marketed in all of the …