Template talk:Routes of administration, dosage forms

Eye Drops

Surely these should be in the parenteral catergory rather than the ENT section? DannyM (talk) 00:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Navbox display

This navbox appears to display expanded as default when in use. (On IE8, can't speak for other browsers) Can this be corrected so that it does not overwhelm the other navboxes? Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:55, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_concentrator shows this template/content. Surely that's a mistake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_concentrator shows this template/content. Surely that's a mistake. Oxygen administration by eye drops? 2601:281:8380:2930:A571:97E3:E70:2842 (talk) 15:27, 28 April 2017 (UTC)jeff1.grove@gmail.com

Reorganization, potential split

Hi, at Template:Routes of administration, dosage forms/sandbox I've reorganized this navbox to be primarily organized based on enteral, parenteral, or topical route. This looks nicer and is more accurately organized in my opinion, but unfortunately is very large - so I changed it to be collapsible subgroups. The template can be passed with an unnamed parameter of either enteral, parenteral, or topical to cause that one to be automatically expanded. It's also possible to have it without sub-groups collapsed.. but it got quite large so I figured I'd propose this first. If nobody objects to this, I will be willing to make the required changes in the 118 pages that transclude this template to ensure that they display the sub-group they are in automatically when the overall navbox is shown. Please see examples below and feel free to comment. I'll be requesting input from applicable wikiprojects and will also give this a week or two for comments before making the change if there's no objections to it.

Along with this, I'd like to propose a renaming of this template to Template:Routes of administration and dosage forms - I think the comma is a bit awkward and this name flows better. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to propose that here or if I have to follow some other move process. Also, please feel free to review the re-organization and let me know if I missed anything - I deleted a couple items that were duplicative at best but aside from that tried to keep everything from the original. Regards, -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 06:03, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

P.S - an alternative idea is to split this into multiple templates - one for enteral and one for parental, and possibly one for topical/other - then deprecate this combined template altogether. I realized I forgot to mention that in my original comment so I am adding it up here above the replies. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 12:46, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

So, a little bit more information: ISBN 9781496347282 (Ansel's Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms and Drug Delivery Systems) groups them as follows as the outline of chapters/sections in the book: "solid" and "solid modified-release" - "semisolid" and "transdermal" - "suppositories inserts and sticks" - "liquid" - and "sterile" (broadly covering parenterals). This would result in 5 subcategories, which is manageable I guess - I'll work on mocking up an "Ansel style" template in a secondary sandbox (Template:Routes of administration, dosage forms/sandbox2) in a moment. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 03:09, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Comments

• Support proposed changes, all of which seem very sensible. The name change is minor and uncontroversial, so I think that discussing here (given that you've notified relevant projects appropriately) is more than sufficient. Thanks for working on this! Klbrain (talk) 10:07, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
• I'm not sure some of the topical entries are correct. I can see that an inhaler for asthma can be considered topical if it is directly applying a drug to the lungs and airways, but other inhalation products for anaesthesia or nasal sprays are systemic in effect. In that way it is similar to buccal. On the other hand, a lozenge is a topical medicine if treating a sore throat -- are there other drugs you suck a losenge for and if so wouldn't they be enteral if it was the swallowed saliva that administered the drug to your stomach? I suggest looking at how reliable sources arrange drugs into hierarchies. Hierarchies are attractive but often hard, because the world isn't simple. The Topical medication article says there are conflicting views on whether "topical" has to be local in effect as well as application. If it is, then e.g. a skin patch for contraception is not a topical medicine. I think that most people would assume topical is local effect too. A further point is that with the collapsing, the top entries a reader sees are "enteral" and "parenteral" and they will probably not understand either of those words. So is there a less jargon-based approach to the hierarchy? -- Colin°^Talk 10:55, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Colin: That's a good point - to be honest I was unsure of the use of this template given that many things fall into multiple categories. I settled on it being a useful navbox... but we should come to an agreement as to the organization. I'll respond to a few points bulleted here, so forgive me in advance:

  • I tried to remove all the duplicates and pick the most common use for them. Part of this was the placement of lozenges - while lozenges are commonly thought of as the "cough drops" used for sore throats, a medicated lozenge is designed for buccal/sublingual absorption. This holds true for most of the things you may be wondering "how'd he come up with that" - I tried to pick what, to my knowledge and from what I could find, the most common medicinal use for it.
  • On the subject of the words being confusing, they're both linked, but I agree it may be beneficial to add descriptions - how about "Enteral (Digestive tract)" and "Parenteral (Non-digestive tract)" or similar?
  • On the subject of assuming topical is local effect, I'm not sure that this navbox is the place to fix that - again, it's linked for readers to read up on if they so choose. I think given the disagreement, we have an editorial decision to make as to if patches/the like are considered topical - I'd like to make that editorial decision, but I will respect whatever the consensus may be.
  • With regards to the inhalation products being considered topical - to be honest I should probably have removed Anaesthetic machine and Relative analgesia machine - I have never heard those considered a dosage form, and without them, I think it's much more "solid" (pardon the pun) to put inhalations in the topical category. The source I'd love to use (Ansel's Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms and Drug Delivery Systems, 11th edition) doesn't even discuss inhalations. An alternative would be to add a section for "inhaled" parenteral drugs such as anesthesia under the non-injection parenteral box - which I can do if you want.

  All in all, I'm happy to make changes or have it changed - and if people seem to agree that it's worse than it was before, I'm happy to scrap it all. Thanks for your valuable feedback. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 12:24, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

  Colin, apologies for the re-ping, but I've had some time to make another go at it very loosely based on Ansel's organization in that book - if you wouldn't mind taking a look and seeing if it's better? -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:02, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

• comment an alternative idea is to split this into multiple templates - one for enteral and one for parental, and possibly one for topical/other - then deprecate this combined template altogether.....is a better idea, IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:06, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

  Ozzie10aaaa, just to confirm then, you would prefer this over the combined template with the appropriate one "uncollapsed" by default? I personally kind of like the idea of one, admittedly large, navbox - as it covers the entirety of dosage forms in one. As one example, maybe someone is on an article about a suppository and wants to read up on creams or something - I personally think that having it all in one navbox may be useful - but again I don't know that my organization is the best either - I'm looking into it tonight a bit and will make some edits. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:52, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

it would be 'large and complicated', that's why multiple templates may be better...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:47, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Berchanhimez I propose a slight variation to your proposal #1. My preference would be for sections called "By mouth", "Inhaled", "Injected", "On a surface or inserted", "Other". I think this is how most readers will approach the issue - ie what are the major differences for me as a human reader between these. I don't think separating by enteral / parenteral is useful for general people (for example rectal suppository and tablet become closer than sublingual and tablet), and I don't think the extreme classification by solid or semisolid is that useful as in your second proposal. So I think something closer to your first proposal but with slightly different groupings is the way forward. I've tidied up the current template a little which is how I stumbled here. It's nice to meet some other editors active in template space :). --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:28, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
• I think I agree mostly with Tom. I'm not sure the physical properties of the substance is the best top-level grouping structure for "routes of administration", which does really suggest the grouping should be round "routes of administration". The "by mouth" might be better put "swallowed" and perhaps things like buccal and skin patches could be "absorbed" and certainly "inserted" covers several administrations, as does "injected" (intravenous, intramuscular, etc). We also need to watch that this is a navigation template so needs to link to actual medical articles on the topic (or at least, sections in articles). The current template has a lot of links to random stuff unrelated to routes of administration. -- Colin°^Talk 19:22, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
• @Klbrain, Colin, Ozzie10aaaa, and Tom (LT): Hello all, I had forgotten to come back and make another option based on the suggestion of routes of administration - I've now done so - thoughts? -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Examples

Routes

Note, I've asked some technically minded people if they know any way to subst: a Lua template (which was my hack to get both the pills and liquid to fit nicely by using {{Multiple image}}), or we can pick one/other image, or none, or whatever. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:45, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I personally am in favour of a normally formatting navbox, as that is easier to edit. Additionally I don't think images are necessary at all - they are inconsistent with other navboxes and duplicate the words. On the other hand happy also to respect consensus here. PS I am about to take a wikibreak so won't be responding for at least two weeks. Cheers --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:13, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

The template looks straightforward enough to edit the list elements; images are subtle enough that I think they're worth including, although I haven't checked appearance on a small screen. So, happy with the current proposal, but also wouldn't object to a no-image format. Klbrain (talk) 06:13, 29 November 2020 (UTC)