Hillary F. answered • 06/28/19
Pathologist Assistant with a B.A. in Biology, Minor in Psychology
So we can start with calculating what the maximum amount of mg a patient can have in a given 24 hour period. Since the dosage is 52 mg/kg/day and the patient is 39 kg, (52mg x 39 kg) which means the patient would be able to have 2028 mg of this medicine per day.
If we are given the option between the 500 mg tablet q 4 hours or a 300 mg per 5 mL suspension we can start with the tablet.
This is simple enough. If it is given every 4 hours this means that the patient could only take 338 mg per four hours. Since this is not specified I am going to assume it does mean every single 4 hour interval in the given 24 hour period. I am just going to assume the question is asking what is the maximum number of tablets that could be taken in a day is 4 tablets. If the tablets are able to be divided this means that the patient could take 67.6% of the tablet. So a little less than 3/4 of the tablet if it were to be administered around the clock, every 4 hours for 24 hours.
The second part of this question is a little confusing because of the wording. So at the bottom of this is see ggt/hr). Now I am going to make a couple of assumptions. I am going to assume it is supposed to be gtt/hr, which is the medical abbreviation for drops or drip (gtt). Which is fine however the dosing is 300 mg per 5 mL suspension. Usually in pharmacology, when "suspension' is said I assume it is oral suspension because this is the only time i see it used. So if we are asking how much one may get per hour we can calculate this easily. So once again based of mg/kg/day the maximum dose is 2028 mg. So we can start with the maximum dosage, we know that the said drug is 300 mg/5mL suspension so 2028mg/300mg = 6.76. We can then multiply the 5mL by 6.76, which gives us 33.8. Since we are wanting to know what the dosing would be per hour, we divide 33.8 by 24 (hours) which gives us an amount of 1.408 mL q1hr. 1 mL is equivalent to 20 drops. So this means we can give 28.16 gtt/hour because 1.408mL x 20 = 28.16.
