How to Cut Finasteride Tablets

Doctors prescribe Finasteride, also known as Proscar, to male patients for a few conditions, including baldness and enlarged, but benign, prostate glands. This small blue pill can be quite expensive depending on your insurance coverage. To make the medicine more accessible, some doctors will prescribe larger dose tablets, instructing the patient to cut the pill into halves or quarters. However, unlike many pills, Finasteride has no middle indentation for easy separation. Given the small size of the medicine, typically 1 mg to 5 mg, safely cutting a Finasteride tablet requires a pill cutter and a few simple steps.

Things You'll Need

• Pill cutter

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Instructions

• 1

  Obtain a pill cutter. Any major grocery store or general drug store will sell pill cutters in the pharmacy section. Actual designs vary, but most pill cutters are approximately the length of a cardboard cutter but with the blade on the inside of the frame.

• 2

  Raise the pill cutter lever and insert your Finasteride tablet into one of the half-circle grooves found inside the pill cutter frame. The grooved spaces will secure the tablet during cutting. Most pill cutters have multiple grooved slots and can hold up to three or four pills at a time, saving you time and energy.

• 3

  Push the arm of the pill cutter downward until the blade rests in the middle of the Finasteride tablet. Make any adjustments necessary to match the center of the blade with the center of the pill.

• 4

  Press the lever down firmly until you hear the tablets splitting. Separate multiple pills inside the cutter by applying more pressure with your thumb and fingers until you hear a splitting sound for each pill.

• 5

  Raise the lever and place the separated pills into the original medicine bottle. If your doctor instructed you to cut your Finasteride into quarters, replace the half-tablets into the pill cutter and repeat the process.