ABSTRACT
During the past four decades, the pharmaceutical industry has invested vast amounts of time and money in the study of tablet compaction. This expenditure is quite reasonable when one considers how valuable tablets, as a dosage form, are to the industry. Because oral dosage forms can be self-administered by the patient, they are obviously more profitable to manufacture than parenteral dosage forms that must be administered, in most cases, by trained personnel. This is reflected by the fact that well over 80% of the drugs in the United States that are formulated to produce systemic effects are marketed as oral dosage forms. Compared to other oral dosage forms, tablets are the manufacturer’s dosage form of choice because of their relatively low cost of manufacture, package, and shipment; increased stability and virtual tamper resistance (most tampered-with tablets either become discolored or disintegrate).
