Jewelry notch
A jewelry notch is a notch on the upper side of a tablet is mounted and adjacent an aesthetic purpose also serves to distinguish between tablets.
Medication problems
When taking tablets, the decorative notch is often confused with a so-called breaking notch , i.e. H. with a predetermined breaking point , which is intended to facilitate manual sharing for dose adjustment . In this case one speaks of Bisect with 2-fold, Trisect with 3-fold and Quadrisect with 4-fold division.
Inadequate explanations in the package insert , but also inadequate information for doctors, lead patients to deduce from the presence of a notch its function and divide tablets unnecessarily, which leads to an incorrect dosage of the medicinal products - from half to one and a half times the amount - and thus ineffectiveness or intolerance.
With some drugs, e.g. B. film-coated tablets , improper division can lead to substances that are only to be absorbed ( resorbed ) in the small intestine , already destroyed by the stomach acid ; in addition, the effect of a retard coating can be canceled.