[Freezing of solutions for parenteral usage: advantages and disadvantages. Nine month's experience at the pharmacy of the Hospital of Nancy].

: Usually parenteral solutions can be kept longer if they are frozen. This freezing procedure assumes one knows the stability of frozen drugs. Freezing has a few drawbacks; preparations must be labelled twice (before and after freezing), only standardized doses can be prepared, thawing procedures must be established, cost of freezer and microwave-oven and time needed for thawing and labelling. There are four main advantages; production plannings are improved because time needed for preparation is reduced, quality assurance of the preparation, availability of preparation at any time, reduce of drug wastage. Freezable drugs are listed and sorted by pharmacological class. The presentation includes drug concentration, vehicle, container, storage temperature, assay procedure and stability. Our nine months experience is presented. Three drugs are frozen; methotrexate, metoclopramide and ganciclovir. Considerable preparation time is saved and economy is about FF 150,000.