Diatrizoate: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Diatrizoate is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Solution
- Sold as
- Hypaque Sodium 20%
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every diatrizoate product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Hypaque Sodium 20%.
Combination products containing diatrizoate
A combination is a different drug — different dosing, different warnings. It is listed here so you can find it, not so you can substitute it.
Diatrizoate and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for diatrizoate: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadLimited information indicates that maternal doses of diatrizoate up to 38 g (containing 18.5 grams of iodine) produce low levels in milk. In addition, because diatrizoate is poorly absorbed orally, it is not likely to reach the bloodstream of the infant or cause any adverse effects in breastfed infants. Guidelines developed by several professional organizations state that breastfeeding need not be disrupted after a nursing mother receives an iodine-containing contrast medium.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised September 15, 2024. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about diatrizoate
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 73 reports naming diatrizoate, and the FDA flagged 89% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- acute respiratory distress syndrome8 reports
- diarrhoea8 reports
- dizziness7 reports
- somnolence7 reports
- dysphagia6 reports
- eosinophilia6 reports
- hypoaesthesia6 reports
- jc virus infection6 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean diatrizoate caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take diatrizoate with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run diatrizoate against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does diatrizoate come in?
Across the brands we track, diatrizoate is currently marketed as solution, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic diatrizoate?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled diatrizoate product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Diatrizoate: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/diatrizoate
- MLA
- “Diatrizoate: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/diatrizoate.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for diatrizoate on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.