Triptone - Medical Use

Medical Use

Scopolamine has a number of uses in medicine:

  • Primary uses:
    • Its primary use is for the treatment of postoperative nausea and vomiting and sea sickness, leading to its use by scuba divers.
    • Treatment of intestinal cramping
    • For ophthalmic purposes
    • As a general depressant and adjunct to narcotic painkillers
  • Secondary uses:
    • As a preanesthetic agent
    • As a drying agent for sinuses, lungs, and related areas: In otolaryngology, it is used to dry the upper airway (antisialogogue action) prior to instrumentation of the airway.
    • To reduce motility and secretions in the GI tract—most frequently in tinctures or other belladonna or stramonium preparations, often used in conjunction with other drugs as in Donnagel original forumulation, Donnagel-PG (with paregoric), Donnabarb/Barbadonna/Donnatal (with phenobarbital), and a number of others
    • Uncommonly, for some forms of Parkinsonism
    • As an adjunct to opioid analgesia, such as the proprietary fixed-ratio product Twilight Sleep and the technique after which it was named which contained morphine and scopolamine, Scophedal (oxycodone, ephedrine and scopolamine), some of the original formulations of Percodan, and some European brands of methadone injection
    • As an over-the-counter sedative, (until November 1990, scopolamine in minute doses could be purchased OTC in the United States): It can be used as a depressant of the central nervous system, and was formerly used as a bedtime sedative.

Scopolamine is an ingredient of Schlesinger's Analgesic Solution, invented in the first decade of the previous century for use as a general-purpose analgesic, as well as drops for painful eye conditions, and an antitussive. The combination, as given in the 1913 US Pharmacopoeia and other national formularies, is 15 mg dionine hydrochloride, 10 mg morphine sulfate, and 125 µg scopolamine hydrobromide per cc. Some sources give the recipe as 1/4 grain dionine, 1/6 grain morphine, and ~29/810 grain of scopolamine; in some cases the salts of morphine and dionine may differ.

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