Calculating The Maintenance Dose
The required maintenance dose may be calculated as:
Where:
-
MD is the maintenance dose rate Cp = desired peak concentration of drug CL = clearance of drug in body F = bioavailability
For an intravenously administered drug, the bioavailability F will equal 1, since the drug is directly introduced to the bloodstream. If the patient requires an oral dose, bioavailability will be less than 1 (depending upon absorption, first pass metabolism etc.), requiring a larger loading dose.
Read more about this topic: Maintenance Dose
Famous quotes containing the words calculating the, calculating, maintenance and/or dose:
“What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“Sin in this country has been always said to be rather calculating than impulsive.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)
“War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)