Longest Active Drug Shortages
Currently shorted drugs ranked by duration — the longest-running supply disruptions.
What This Ranking Tells Us
Drug shortages occur when demand exceeds supply, typically due to manufacturing problems, raw material shortages, regulatory actions, or business decisions to discontinue low-margin products. The longest shortages tend to involve injectable medications and sterile products that require specialized manufacturing. Chronic shortages force healthcare providers to use alternative therapies, ration supplies, or delay treatments — creating patient safety risks beyond the drug itself.
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Primary source: FDA Drug Shortage Database. Supplementary labeling: FDA Drug Labels (SPL). These rankings are for informational purposes only and should not be used to make medical decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What causes drug shortages?
The most common causes are manufacturing quality problems (contamination requiring facility shutdowns), supply chain disruptions (raw material unavailability), regulatory actions (FDA inspections finding violations), and market dynamics (manufacturers discontinuing low-profit generics). Injectable sterile products are most vulnerable because few facilities can manufacture them.
How do shortages affect patients?
Shortages can delay treatments, force switches to less effective alternatives, increase medication errors (unfamiliar dosing of substitutes), and raise costs when patients must use more expensive alternatives. Hospitals maintain shortage management teams specifically to mitigate these risks.
Why do some shortages last years?
Long-running shortages typically involve sterile injectable drugs with only 1-2 manufacturers. Resolving manufacturing quality issues can take years of facility upgrades and FDA reinspection. New manufacturers entering the market face 2-4 year FDA approval timelines. The economics of generic injectables often discourage new entrants.
Reading the Longest Active Drug Shortages
This table ranks all tracked drugs by days in shortage, sourced from FDA Drug Shortage Database. The dataset is published by the relevant federal agency and updated as new reports and surveys come in. Each row links to a full drug profile so readers can move from headline number to the underlying FDA data — labeling, FAERS reports, recalls, pricing, and shortage status — that explains why a particular drug sits where it does.
Drug shortages occur when demand exceeds supply, typically due to manufacturing problems, raw material shortages, regulatory actions, or business decisions to discontinue low-margin products. The longest shortages tend to involve injectable medications and sterile products that require specialized manufacturing. Chronic shortages force healthcare providers to use alternative therapies, ration supplies, or delay treatments — creating patient safety risks beyond the drug itself.
Rankings are diagnostic, not prescriptive. Absolute numbers are shaped by exposure volume, reporting practices, and data-collection methodology, so a drug near the top is not automatically "worse" than a drug near the bottom — it may simply be older, more widely prescribed, or manufactured by firms with more visible reporting. Context from FDA Drug Shortage Database updates continuously, which means the relative order here can change from one refresh to the next. Rankings on this page are for educational research only and must not be used as a substitute for medical advice from a licensed clinician.
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Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.