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My cat is on Acular eye drops and has been for a while .From the vet they are £30 .I see they are also prescribed for humans it even says so on the packet but they are about £10 from the doctor also on prescription .Can I use my prescription anywhere to get them even the packet has the health warnings for people on them.Also why so much from the vets?
I am a large animal vet dealing with mainly horses and farm animals so not familiar with that product, however it will be more from your vet because they will be buying it in small amounts from a supplier rather than in bulk and they will have a mark up on it which varies between practices.
You can always ask for a written prescription which can be used to buy medication from any licensed pharmacy. I would be very careful with some of the online drugs sites as there are some suspect ones e.g. selling medications cheaply with a short date on for instance. Most practices will charge a small prescription fee for sorting out the paper work.
Whilst your vet is likely to be slightly more expensive you do at least have the security of knowing where the medication has come from and a ready source of on tap advice.
Hope this helps!
Thanks, I am wary of the online pharmacies as I know there are fake drugs about and it is eyes we are talking about .
How do you know they are about a tenner from your doctor ? Is he/she willing to prescribe them for your cat ?
"cost" price in the NHS is about 3 quid (5ml bottle), no idea what a vet would pay (they prob pay vat, so I guess at least £3.60)
ok online they are about a tenner .Having just got the third lot I am trying to find a safe legal way to buy them as our vet bills are nearly £600 and counting for drugs ,bloods and referral to an eye specialist
I'm a small animal vet and we sell Acular for about £18 including VAT. Our wholesale price is significantly more than £10 so this is a quite reasonable and normal markup. Internet pharmacies operate on the lines of low overheads, large volume and very low markups - if you sell thousands of them and make 50p per sale you still make a profit. We would go out of business if we tried to do this. As long as you use a reputable UK Internet pharmacy you can get them online but you'll need a prescription from your vet who will charge for it.
Don't ask me where a cost price of £3.60 came from - that is way off.
Try ringing your internet pharmacy day or night for free advice. That said, £30 seems very expensive.
BNF:Don't ask me where a cost price of £3.60 came from - that is way off.
Preparations
Acular® (Allergan) Prescription only medicine
Eye drops, ketorolac trometamol 0.5%, net price 5 mL = £3.00
BNF price will reflect cost to NHS which is most likely the single largest purchaser of that product in the UK.
I would be very surprised and indeed annoyed if they couldn't negotiate a very significant discount from the manufacturer/distributor.
"cost" price in the NHS is about 3 quid (5ml bottle), no idea what a vet would pay
So I got the vet to write a prescription and went to Lloyds pharmacy .They looked a bit confused at first .The end result was 2 lots of eye drops for a £10.80 private prescription rather than £63 from the vet !!.Im rather pleased with myself at this one.