Question

A patient has a bottle of warfarin (Coumadin) 5 mg tablets at home. After his most recent international normalized ratio (INR), the doctor calls and tells him to take 7.5 mg/day. How many tablets (scored) should the patient take?

Answer 1

The patient should take one and a half scored tablets of warfarin to achieve a daily dose of 7.5 mg.

Step-by-step explanation:

A patient with a prescription for warfarin (Coumadin) currently has 5 mg tablets at home. According to the doctor's instructions, the patient needs to take 7.5 mg of warfarin daily. To determine how many scored tablets the patient should take to achieve the required dose we divide the prescribed dose by the strength of the tablets available.

In this case, we divide 7.5 mg by 5 mg to get 1.5, which means the patient needs to take one and a half tablets to reach the desired 7.5 mg dose. As the tablets are scored they can be easily split to achieve the half tablet needed.