Martindale: The complete drug reference

Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference is a reference book published by Pharmaceutical Press listing some 6,000 drugs and medicines used throughout the world, including details of over 161,000 proprietary preparations. It also includes 675 disease treatment reviews. It was first published in 1883 under the title Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia. Martindale contains information on drugs in clinical use worldwide, as well as selected investigational and veterinary drugs, herbal and complementary medicines, pharmaceutical excipients, vitamins and nutritional agents, vaccines, radiopharmaceuticals, contrast media and diagnostic agents, medicinal gases, drugs of abuse and recreational drugs, toxic substances, disinfectants, and pesticides.

International usefulness

Martindale aims to cover drugs and related substances reported to be of clinical interest anywhere in the world. It provides a useful source of information for patients arriving from abroad to identify their existing medication. This may reveal that a currently taken proprietary preparation is available under another brand name. Alternatively if the drug is not available, the class of agent can be determined allowing a pharmacist or doctor to determine which alternative equivalent drugs can be substituted. Monographs include Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System (ATC) numbers and FDA Unique Ingredient Identifier (UNII) codes to help readers refer to other information systems.

Arrangement

Martindale is arranged into two main parts followed by three extensive indexes:

• Monographs on drugs and ancillary substances, listing 5,930 monographs arranged in 49 chapters based on clinical use with the corresponding disease treatment reviews. Monographs summarize the nomenclature, properties, and actions of each substance. A chapter on supplementary drugs and other substances covers some 1095 monographs on new drugs, those not easily classified, herbals, and drugs no longer clinically used but still of interest. Monographs of some toxic substances are also included.
• Preparations - including over 161,000 items from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela.
• Directory of Manufacturers listing some 15,300 entries.
• Multilingual Pharmaceutical Terms: this index lists nearly 5,600 pharmaceutical terms and routes of administration in 13 major European languages as an aid to the non-native speaker in interpreting packaging, product information, or prescriptions written in another language.
• General index: prepared from 172,000 entries it includes approved names, synonyms and chemical names; a separate Cyrillic section lists nonproprietary and proprietary names in Russian and Ukrainian.

Digital versions include an additional 1,100 drug monographs, 46,000 preparation names, and 6,700 manufacturers.

List of the editions

Till date there are 37 editions of Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference. The 37th edition was published in April 2011.

See also

British National Formulary

References

• Sean C. Sweetman, ed (2011). Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference (37th edition ed.). London: Pharmaceutical Press. ISBN 978-0-85369-933-0. 

External links

• Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference, 37th Edition
• Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference on MedicinesComplete