Eyes are delicate and so need to be treated with gentle non-irritant creams, drops and salves.

Warts are not delicate and are treated with substances that often cause considerable irritation.

You might imagine therefore that treating an eye lesion with a wart salve might cause a lot of damage.

The U.S. Food and Drug administration reports today that a patient has sustained eye damage because of a mix up between two similarly named drugs.

Durasal is a wart remover and is NOT approved by the FDA.

Durezol is a steroidal eye-drop that IS approved by the FDA

FDA ALERT TO PHARMACISTS AND HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS RE SIMILAR SOUNDING DRUGS DUREZOL AND DURASAL

COUNTRY : USA

12/28/2011

FDA is alerting pharmacists and other health care professionals of potential injury due to confusion between the FDA-approved eye medicine Durezol (difluprednate ophthalmic emulsion) 0.05% and the unapproved prescription topical wart remover Durasal (salicylic acid) 26%.

There has been one report of serious injury when a pharmacist mistakenly gave an eye surgery patient Durasal, the salicylic acid–containing wart remover, instead of the prescribed Durezol eye drops. Durezol is approved for treatment of inflammation and pain association with ocular surgery.

Several other cases were reported arising from confusion between Durezol and Durasal. In some cases, the error was discovered prior to the medication reaching the patient. There were also complaints received from health care practitioners concerning the similarity between the names Durezol and Durasal.

Due to the potential for confusion between these two products, pharmacists should be vigilant when filling prescriptions for the ophthalmic solution Durezol.

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