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Procainamide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands

Procainamide is a medicine sold in the U.S. under 2 brand and generic names. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.

By the pharmaranks editorial teamReviewed against the FDA (openFDA label, NDC Directory & Enforcement) sourcesUpdated Jul 24, 2026How we research

Key facts

Available as
Tablet, extended release · Capsule · Tablet · Injectable
Sold as
2 products — Procanbid and Pronestyl
Prescription?
Prescription only
Generic available?
Not in our catalog

Every procainamide product we track (2)

Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.

Procainamide products
#DrugRatingPharmacy pays
1
Procanbid
Not yet rated—View →
2
Pronestyl
Not yet rated—View →

How long procainamide keeps

No procainamide label we read sets a separate limit for after opening, but they do specify how it must be stored — and the stability behind any date assumes those conditions.

Does procainamide expire? The in-use limits and storage rules from its labels

Procainamide and breastfeeding

From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.

Maternal doses of procainamide 2 grams daily produced low levels of the drug and its active metabolite in the milk of one mother. Although it would not be expected to cause adverse effects in older breastfed infants, the relative lack of data concerning breastfeeding during maternal procainamide therapy would argue for careful monitoring if this drug is used while breastfeeding a neonate possibly Measurement of infant serum levels could help to rule out toxicity if there is a concern.

Full LactMed record for procainamide: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider instead

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised July 15, 2024. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.

What people report to the FDA about procainamide

The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 250 reports naming procainamide, and the FDA flagged 90% 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:

  • atrial fibrillation22 reports
  • maternal exposure during pregnancy19 reports
  • respiratory failure19 reports
  • systemic lupus erythematosus19 reports
  • ascites18 reports
  • electrocardiogram qt prolonged18 reports
  • fatigue18 reports
  • antiphospholipid syndrome17 reports

Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean procainamide 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 26, 2026.

Related calculators

How long it stays in your system →

Frequently asked questions

Can you take procainamide 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 procainamide against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.

What brand names is procainamide sold under?

We track 2 procainamide-containing products in the U.S.: Procanbid and Pronestyl. They are the same active ingredient; they differ in form, manufacturer, price and FDA recall record.

What forms does procainamide come in?

Across the brands we track, procainamide is currently marketed as tablet, extended release, capsule, tablet and injectable, 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 procainamide?

We do not currently list a generic-labelled procainamide 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). Procainamide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/procainamide
MLA
“Procainamide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/procainamide.

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 procainamide on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.