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Question

Posted on: March 9 2017

Prescription of vascular surgeon with Desferal

A vascular surgeon prescribes: Desferal 10amp 500mg; Dimethyl sulfoxide 20g; Vaseline AD 100g

Answer

1 Desferal ampoule contains 500mg   Deferoxaminemesilate. So in total you need to inject 5 g of powder into the petroleum jelly. Instead of using the PLO gel to promote the uptake, the Doctor uses Dimethylsulfoxide, which is known as a absorption promoter  . But not without any skin toxicity.  

I suspect the powder will dissolve in dimethyl sulfoxide but if dimethyl sulfoxide is completely miscible with petroleum jelly I cannot find it. If this is not the case we will have to emulsify it in the petroleum jelly and the simplest will be to add dropwise sorbitansesquioleate (see AVA) until the dimethyl sulfoxide is fully absorbed by the petroleum jelly.