Core tips: development history of medical PVC hard tablets

The packaging of medicinal polyvinyl chloride (PVC) hard tablets was jointly developed by the German company LAWSON MARDON SINGEN and BOSCH in the mid-1950s. The application of PTP packaging has led to the success of single package of drugs.

PTP packaging has great advantages: first, it provides patients with a single dose of drug packaging, which is convenient and economical; Secondly, PTP packaging protects drugs with good performance, high production efficiency, low cost, small storage space, light weight and convenient transportation; Thirdly, it is safe. Because the PTP package can be printed with text instructions, both the drug distributor and the drug user can avoid the occurrence of wrong drugs. In China, the development of PTP aluminum plastic packaging can be traced back to the 1980s. 85 years ago, the tablets and capsules of drugs produced in China were packed in glass bottles or simple plastic bags, which caused many problems in use, drug shelf life and drug safety. After 84 years, Hangzhou Plastic Factory (the predecessor of Hangzhou Plastic Industry Co., Ltd.) successfully developed rigid PVC pharmaceutical packaging tablets in China, which made PTP aluminum-plastic packaging - a novel packaging widely welcomed by pharmaceutical factories and rapidly developed into the main packaging form of tablets and capsules. The surface materials used in the packaging of PTP aluminum-plastic blisters are commonly PVC medical tablets and a series of composite materials coated or compounded with other functional polymer materials based on PVC medical tablets. These materials are mainly polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC), polytrifluoroethylene (PCTFE), nylon (PA), polyethylene (PE), aluminum foil (AL), etc. The composite material combines the properties of various materials. It not only has the basic properties of PVC medicinal tablets, but also has excellent properties that a single material does not have, such as: excellent barrier to water vapor and oxygen, good light resistance, heat sealing, excellent thermal stability and processability. It is gradually replacing PVC medicinal tablets and becoming one of the development directions of drug packaging in the future.

In recent years, foreign countries have successively developed PTP aluminum plastic packaging surface materials such as polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Although they have advantages over PVC hard sheets in some aspects, they are far inferior to PVC hard sheets in processing performance and production efficiency, and need to purchase new equipment, with high production costs. Therefore, they have not been widely used, but only for the packaging of a small number of special drugs, accounting for a small proportion. PVC hard sheet is the main PTP packaging material. The selection of these material varieties can be determined by the pharmaceutical factory according to the recommendations of the packaging material experts, combined with the nature of the built-in drugs and the relevant stability tests.