Rite Aid Bacitracin Ointment - A Nice Product But Poorly Packaged And Overpriced

I buy a lot of wound care items and most of the time if it is a medicine I try to go with products that I am familiar with. When I saw that I was out of my usual bacitracin with zinc first aid ointment and couldn’t find my trusty Neo To Go packets I started to panic. My foot ulcer is almost healed but if I let it go for more than a few hours without changing the dressing on it I take a huge gamble of it taking a turn for the worse. Rite Aid usually has a huge stock of first aid items but when I stopped there all they had that was even remotely close to my usual products was their brand name of bacitracin. Figuring that this was better than nothing I grabbed a tube of it along with a few other items I needed for my poor foot and made my way to the check out counter. As soon as I got outside I opened the box and took out the tube to apply some to my foot; I wasn’t the least bit pleased with what I saw, not only was there no type of protective wrap or even a piece of tape on the package but the tube had no type of seal in it. Someone could have purchased this, used it and returned it and no one would be the wiser.

Rite Aid Bacitracin Ointment, USP One Ounce Tube

Bacitracin is one of the most common types of first aid products; it can be used on burns, cuts, scrapes or anything that has the possibility of contracting infection. Rite Aid’s version is an ointment so it is thicker than a cream, this means you can apply it to an area without worrying about it spreading or smearing all over the place before you cover it with a band aid or dressing. Since this is the middle of summer I try to keep this some place where it is cool so that it doesn’t get runny [from the heat] - something you definately don’t want when you are trying to apply this to a specific area of your body. Rite Aid claims that this will help prevent infections and can be used for minor cuts, scrapes, burns or wounds. So far it’s worked great for my foot but I am still a little ticked that there was no type of safety seal on the package or box.

The tube contains one ounce of product, this translates to 28 grams of bacitracin. Each unit [one gram] contains 500 milligrams of bacitracin so keep that in mind when you are applying it. Just because it says that you are getting 500 mg’s doesn’t mean that you are getting exactly that much. If you use less than a gram then you aren’t getting the complete 500 mg’s. I doubt anyone is going to sit there and measure out exactly one gram of this to apply to a wound so it’s sort of a crap shoot as to how much you apply or how thick you layer it on. I usually put enough on the ulcer to cover it completely and make sure that it gets down into the area that they had to cut out. Yeah, that is gross but it’s the only way to ensure that it won’t get infected and the bacitracin is getting to where it needs to be. You also have to take into consideration that if you apply a dressing to this, some of it is going to get absorbed into it. This is a good thing in a way, it creates a barrier to keep infections and nasty stuff out.

This does have a long shelf life; the tube I picked up had the expiration date on the tube and box - April 2008. So just about the time the Twinkies need to be yanked off the snack shelf, this will get tossed in the trash. You can use this on just about any type of injury but you will want to make sure that you aren’t allergic to the ‘inactive’ ingredients - light mineral oil and white petrolatum. common sense should tell you to keep this out of the reach of children [especially if they use smaller tubes of toothpaste - can you imagine them grabbing this accidentally and brushing their teeth with it!]. If ingested accidentally contact your local poison control center. If you are treating an animal bite use this only after you have seen a doctor and he or she has said that this is something that you can safely use on the wound.

Price

I expected this to be a little less than the name brand versions but it was selling for $3.99 a tube. I have seen this as part of a ‘buy one get one free’ sale in the past but never purchased it when it was on sale. Products like Neosporin cost about the same as this so you aren’t going to be saving a ton of money going with the Rite Aid brand. The one thing that I do like about it is that it comes with the usual Rite Aid guarantee of satisfaction. If you don’t like the way it works or there is a problem with it, you can return it to your Rite Aid store for a refund or exchange. I bought this out of necessity however I will have to think long and hard about whether or not I’ll buy it in the future.

The Bottom Line

I have no idea why Rite Aid doesn’t have some type of safety seal on the box or on the tube; even if it had one of those annoying metal caps on it that needed to be punctured - it would be better than having nothing at all. For me this was something that was a ‘all or nothing’ purchase; I might but it in the future for general first aid purposes but I really need to have something with zinc in it to help it heal faster. This did help the healing process continue on my ulcer and the surrounding skin and I certainly didn’t experience any negative effects from it but the whole safety issue still bothers me.


As always, thanks for the read!

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2005 Freak369


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