Cold and flu medicines recalled

[pquinn]

Apparently all products containing pholcodine are being pulled because there's a small health risk.

When you look at the risk it's "an increased risk of anaphylaxis in patients who receive general anaesthesia involving neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) during surgery", so not the most common of scenarios.

Then you see that even within that specific scenario it's only a 1 in 10,000 risk, and even then can be managed.

So somehow a recall seems slightly disproportionate?

[Paul Dishman]

Having happily recommended Pholcodine products for my entire 40 year career as a pharmacist without any problems I’d have said this is well OTT, but the MHRA have the bigger picture.

[pquinn]

Still seems slightly extreme that the reaction to a very very rare adverse interaction in a very specific scenario is to pull the products?

It's not exactly proportionate, then again plenty of bans of stuff are based on truly negligible and highly manageable risks.

[BabySharkDD]

Removing the only cold/flu medication that works. Yippee