Question

The prescribed dosage of a drug is 9 kg daily, meaning that 9 milligrams of the drug should be administered daily for each kilogram of a patient's weight. How many 300-milligram tablets should be given each day to a patient who weighs 162 pounds? (Use the fact that 1 lb = 0.45 kg.) The patient should receive 300-milligram tablets each day. (Round to the nearest whole number as needed.)

Answer 1

To calculate the number of 300-milligram tablets a 162-pound patient should receive daily, convert the weight to kilograms, multiply by the prescribed dosage to find the total daily dosage in milligrams, and divide this by the tablet strength, then round to the nearest whole number.

Step-by-step explanation:

The task is to determine how many 300-milligram tablets should be given to a 162-pound patient when the prescribed dosage of the drug is 9 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. First, convert the patient's weight from pounds to kilograms using the conversion factor 1 lb = 0.45 kg. The patient weighs 162 pounds, which is equivalent to 162 lb × 0.45 kg/lb = 72.9 kg. The total daily dosage for the patient is 72.9 kg × 9 mg/kg = 656.1 mg. Since each tablet is 300 mg, we divide the total daily dosage by the strength of each tablet: 656.1 mg ÷ 300 mg/tablet = 2.187 tablets.

As tablets cannot be dispensed as a fraction, round to the nearest whole number. The patient should receive 2 tablets each day (since we typically round down with medications to avoid overdose).