Fast dissolving tablet: an alternative oral formulation for paediatric patients

Pediatrics is the branch of medicine dealing with the health and medical care of infants, children, and adolescents from birth up to the age of 18.Paediatrics is different from adult medicine in additional ways than one. The smaller body of an infant or neonate or a toddler is physiologically different from that of an adult. So treating children isn't like treating a miniature adult. Genetic Variance, Congenital defects, and developmental issues are of greater concern to pediatricians than physicians treating adults. Oral routes of drug administration have wide acceptance up to 50-60% of total dosage forms. Solid dosage forms are popular because of ease of administration, accurate dosage, selfmedication, pain avoidance and most importantly the patient compliance. The most popular solid dosage forms are being tablets and capsules; one important drawback of this dosage forms for some patients, is the difficulty to swallow. Drinking water plays an important role in the swallowing of oral dosage forms. In most cases a fast dissolving drug delivery system is a tablet which dissolves or disintegrates in the oral cavity, which can be taken without water or chewing. To mask the taste of the active ingredient substances must be included in 90% of fast dissolving delivery system. The masked active ingredient is swallowed by patient’s saliva along with the soluble and insoluble ingredients. Others are also known as melt-in-mouth tablets, reprimelts, porous tablets, orodispersible, quick dissolving or rapid disintegrating tablets. Fast dissolving tablets are also called as mouth-dissolving tablets, melt-in mouth tablets, Orodispersible tablets, rapimelts, porous tablets, quick dissolving etc. Fast dissolving tablets are those when put on tongue disintegrate instantaneously releasing the drug which dissolve or disperses in the saliva. Their growing importance was underlined recently when European pharmacopoeia adopted the term “Orodispersibletablet” as a tablet which should disperse/disintegrate in less than three minutes. The bioavailability of some drugs may be increased due to absorption of drug in oral cavity and also due to pregastric absorption of saliva containing dispersed drugs that pass down into the stomach. The technologies used for manufacturing fast-dissolving tablets are freeze-drying, spray-drying, tablet molding, sublimation, sugar-based excipients, tablet compression, and disintegration addition.