Practice exercise (made-up values, not clinical guidance). A patient starts regular doses of gentamicin, which has a half-life of 2 h. Using the rule that steady state is reached after about five half-lives, after how many hours tss is steady state reached?
Clinical pharmacokinetics worksheet with answers
Practice exercise (made-up values, not clinical guidance). A patient who weighs 59 kg needs a loading dose of tobramycin to reach a level of 10 mg/L straight away. The volume of distribution is 0.3 L/kg. Find the loading dose LD in mg.
Practice exercise (made-up values, not clinical guidance). An 80 kg patient is to be loaded intravenously with aminophylline to reach a theophylline level of 15 mg/L. The volume of distribution is 0.5 L/kg and the salt factor is S = 0.8. Find the loading dose LD of aminophylline in mg.
Practice exercise (made-up values, not clinical guidance). After an IV dose of gentamicin, the level is 9 mg/L at 1 h and 2.3 mg/L at 5 h. Assume first-order elimination. Find the elimination rate constant k.
Practice exercise (made-up values, not clinical guidance). A patient's gentamicin half-life is 2.5 h. The target is a peak of 7 mg/L and a trough of 0.5 mg/L. Assuming rapid IV doses and first-order elimination, what dosing interval τ lets the level fall from the peak to the trough? Round to one decimal place.
Practice exercise (made-up values, not clinical guidance). A vancomycin infusion is started without a loading dose. The half-life in this patient is 6 h. How long t does it take to reach 90% of the steady-state level?
Answer key
- 1. tss = 10 h
- 2. LD = 177 mg
- 3. LD = 750 mg
- 4. k = 0.3411 h⁻¹
- 5. τ = 9.5 h
- 6. t = 19.93 h
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