The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Vol 27, 86-86, Copyright © 1979 by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Drug delivery
EG Voorhees, WH Brott and TE Bowen
The calculations necessary to allow infusion of a known drug dosage at
micrograms per kilogram of body weight per minute are time-consuming and
error prone. A simpler method entails multiplication of the patient's
weight in kilograms by the factor 15. The resultant figure represents the
number of milligrams of drug to be placed in 250 ml of infusate vehicle.
The solution, which is delivered through a microdrip chamber (60 gtt per
milliliter), will contain 1 microgram per kilogram in each drop. One is
thus permitted to define dosage by setting up the solution to have 1 gtt =
1 microgram/kg.