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Common Drug Suffixes

Writer's picture: Katie ReigelspergerKatie Reigelsperger

As a pharmacy technician, you will need to become familiar with several different medications. This will include knowing the brand and generic names as well as what these medications are used for. This can be intimidating at first, but learning to use some specific clues and tricks will help. At KLR Pharmacy Technician Training School, students have worked together to come up with additional clues to remember some of these, but below is a list of common drug suffixes (the ending part of a word), and some examples and tips for each one. It is important to remember when utilizing these clues, that you are using the generic name of the medication! Once you have these clues memorized, you can simply look at the generic name of a medication and know what it is used for! For example, Xanax has a generic name of Alprazolam. For someone with knowledge of these clues, it would be easy to look at the generic name ending and recognize that this medication is used for anxiety!






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243 Comments


Olatunde Akinyemi
Olatunde Akinyemi
Dec 14, 2024

Drug suffixes are used to identify a class of drugs and their uses

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Areeg Amseab
Dec 11, 2024

• Drug suffixes are used to identify the class or purpose of a medication based on its generic name.

• Each suffix corresponds to a specific category of drugs and their uses. For example, “pril” indicates ACE inhibitors for blood pressure, while “prazole” refers to proton pump inhibitors used for GERD.

• Medications with similar suffixes often treat the same conditions or belong to the same drug class, making it easier to recognize their purpose. For instance, “-statin” drugs all lower cholesterol, and “-olol” drugs are beta blockers for hypertension.

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Wang Haixia
Wang Haixia
Dec 11, 2024

blood pressure medications are end  --pril,-olol,-sartan,  ,,, ---depine blood pressure  calcium channel blocker,---thiazide for blood pressure, 

Hypercholesterolemia   mediaction end ---statin,, 

anxiety medication end ---pam ---olam --dam;;;;;;

END --CONAZOLE IS TREAT ANTIFUNGAL,  

---triptan  for headaches, 

----prazole treat fot GERD,PPI, -

--tidine treat for H2RA ,gerd,

---codone for PAIN, 

---XOETINE for depression,-

--afil for erectile dysfunction

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alexacarmany459
Dec 10, 2024

suffixes helps identify drugs!

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Hannah Harrison
Hannah Harrison
Dec 10, 2024

I learned that when using drug suffixes that you need to use the generic name of the drug!


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