Colin asked
A drug is ordered for a patient who weighs 110 lbs. The order says: 60mg/kg of drug A bid PO x 7 days. The drug you have on hand is mixed 1 gram per 5cc. How much do you pour out?
Answer
For this question, we need to do some dose conversions as well as a dosage calculation.
The first step is to convert the patients weight to KG. The conversion unit is 1 KG = 2.2 LBS. You may have learned that 1 KG = 2.205 LBS but I will be using 2.2 as we get more even numbers.
110 LBS
--------- = 50 KG
2.2 LBS/KG
The next step is a dosage calculation.
60 mg
------- (*) 50 KG = 3000 mg per dose
1 KG
We are given one dose, twice daily for 7 days.
3000mg 2 Doses 7 Days
-------- (*) -------- (*) = 42000 total mg
1 Dose 1 Day
The next step is to convert this total to grams, since that is what we have on hand.
42000 mg
---------- = 42 grams
1000 mg/gram
Finally:
5 ml
42 grams (*) ------ = 210 ml
1 gram
