Originally Posted by Dr. Smith

Ginnie,

Are you sure your label says Oxycontin? I'll bet it says oxycodone w/APAP 5/325. There are other ratios as well - 7.5/325, 10/325. There used to be higher APAP/acetaminophen ratios, but I'm not sure now that the daily maximum for acetaminophen has been reduced.

The active ingredient in both Oxycontin and Percocet is oxycodone. Oxycodone is prescribed by itself (sometimes called IR for Immediate Release), combined with acetaminophen (Tylenol) under the trade name Percocet, and in a continuous release formulation called Oxycontin (the Oxy part comes from oxycodone - the contin part stands for "continuous".

There was a time a few years ago when it was thought that the patent had expired on Oxycontin, and it was sold generically as oxycodone CR (continuous release), but Oxycontin CR is redundant. The mfr. (Purdue) went to court and had the patent date extended, so now the only continuous release form available legally in the US is brand-name Oxycontin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxycodone

I know it's confusing, and I don't often get picky about posts, but in the case of medications, I think it's important to be clear and precise. Often just a letter or two difference can mean a lot. For example, some people misspell Oxcontin as oxycotin. However there's another substance - a hormone - called oxytocin. There are more and more cases of misspellings of medications causing serious problems for patients:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/he...ted=all&src=pm

One convention that helps some is that brand-names are/should be capitalized, whereas generic names are not (as above).

Hope this helps,

Doc