If a buccal/sublingual tablet is pulverized, how does the CT curve change?

• A. Shift left with greater height
• B. Shift left with same height
• C. Shift right
• D. No change

Answer: (B)

Pulmonary? No — focus on how buccal/sublingual dosing works. For these routes, dissolution into saliva is often the rate-limiting step before the drug can cross the mucosa and enter the bloodstream. When you pulverize a tablet, you dramatically increase surface area, so it dissolves much faster. That makes absorption happen sooner, shifting the concentration–time curve to earlier times (a leftward shift in Tmax). However, the total amount of drug that can be absorbed from the same dose through the mucosa doesn’t necessarily change, so the peak concentration (Cmax) stays about the same. In short, faster dissolution speeds up onset without increasing the maximum level reached.