Any pharmaceutical that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration has to have a unique imprint. These imprints are often a series of numbers or letters. They may be stamped, etched or embossed on the pill's surface. This information can be used to identify an unknown pill.
Step 1
Take the pill to a pharmacist or a physician. Alternately, you can write down the pill imprint and take that with you. Because pill imprints are unique for each kind of pill, the pharmacist or doctor may be able to look up the imprint in his own database and tell you the identity of the pill.
Step 2
Look up the imprint in the Ident-a-Drug reference book. Ident-a-drug is a reference book that can be found at some libraries (including university and public libraries, as well as reference libraries associated with hospitals). The Ident-a-drug reference lists medications by their number and imprint.
Step 3
Use an online pill database. Drugs.com has a database of different medications that can be searched based on pill number. Pharmer.org also has a listing of different pills with imprints that are hard to identify.
Member Comments