Administration of digitalis, a drug used to control atrial fibrilla-tion in heart patients, must be carefully controlled because even a modest overdose can be fatal. To take differences between patients into account, drug dosages are prescribed in terms of mg/kg body weight. Thus, a child and an adult differ greatly in weight, but both receive the same dosage per kilogram of body weight. At a dosage of 20 mg/kg body weight, how many mil-ligrams of digitalis should a 160 lb patient receive?

Video transcript

Hello everyone today. We have the following problem. A moderate overdose of the medication in Tax Law which is used to control high blood pressure can be lethal. So its administration must be carefully monitored. Drug dosages are specified in terms of milligrams per kilogram body weight to accommodate for patient variations. A kid and an adult have quite different body weights but they can both take the same amount of medication per kilogram of body weight. What amount of milligrams of the Tax Law? Should a patient weighing £77.9 take at a dose of mg per kilogram body weight. So First we want to make note of one conversion and that is that one kg is equal to £2.2. So we're gonna take what we started with our £77.9. We're gonna use the conversion factor. That one kg is equal to £2.2. And lastly we're going to take the dosage that they were taking 12 mg per one kg of body weight. Our units will cancel out appropriately. And we'll be left with 425 mg as our final answer. And with that we've answered the question overall. I hope this helped. And until next time