"For many of the drugs that are short in the community pharmacy setting, there are other drugs available in the same classes," McKinnon said. "For drugs used for anesthesiology, the drugs are more limited." Many hospital pharmacies have been unable to get pentothal for months.
"We went from adequate stocks with no real concern that we were going to run out of them to having none of it virtually overnight," said Dr. Brian Warriner, head of anesthesiology, pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.There are two firms currently producing propofol for the U.S., APP and Hospira, said Karen Riley, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Teva Pharmaceutical announced in May 2010 that it won't make more of the sedative, because propofol is hard to manufacture and the company gets little or no profit from it, company spokeswoman Denise Bradley said at the time.
