| This book is intended for use as a reference source offering practitioners
the key principles in pharmacokinetics and the application of these principles
in drug therapy.
It is largely designed to help predict doses needed to achieve target
drug concentrations or predict drug concentrations from doses administered
to patients. It offers information for medicines that require an understanding
of individual patients’ probable or actual drug concentrations
to achieve medication effectiveness and safety.
This expanded fourth edition incorporates a list of commonly used pharmacokinetic
equations and looks at dosing requirements for neonatal, paediatric and
geriatric patients in addition to overweight and obese patients.
It also
has a new chapter on creatinine clearance estimation, tables on international
and traditional units for drug and laboratory tests, and specific chapters
on anti-infective agents, neurological agents, cardiovascular drugs
and anticoagulants. At last, in this fourth edition, standard international
units finally appear in the tables, with conversion factors to convert
from traditional units. The editor believes that this should allow
easier
use of the book around the world.
General pharmacokinetic principles are discussed in the introductory
chapter including the reasons why some drug concentration measurements
fall outside the expected range of population estimates. This chapter
also includes a glossary of pharmacokinetic terms, selected pharmacokinetic
symbols and a series of pharmacokinetic equations.
A chapter on creatinine clearance estimations has been added to this
edition largely because many dose predictions depend on creatinine
clearance rather than body weight. A good example is how to predict
a dose when
a patient has had a limb amputated.
The main chapters, 24 in total, are devoted to those drugs that require
careful monitoring such as the aminoglycosides, the newer antiepileptics
(felbamate, gabapentin, lamo-trigine, tiagabine, topiramate, levetiracetam,
oxcarbazepine), antirejection agents, carbamazepine, antidepressants,
digoxin, heparin, warfarin and others.
Typically, each chapter includes the usual dose range, the bioavailability
of dosage forms, general pharmacokinetic information (absorption, distribution,
elimination, metabolism, protein binding), clearance, volume of distribution,
half-life and time to steady state, therapeutic range, dosing strategies,
sampling times, pharmacodynamic monitoring, drug-drug interactions,
pharmacodynamic interactions, drug-disease interactions and references.
The final three chapters deal with drug dosing in paediatric patients,
therapeutic drug monitoring in the geriatric patient and dosing concepts
in renal dysfunction.
Authors of the chapters are from a broad range of pharmacy practice:
clinical practice, academia and medical departments of pharmaceutical
companies.
One of the outstanding features of the book is the large number of
references cited at the end of each chapter. For example, the chapter
on phenytoin
and fosphenytoin has 109 references.
This book shows practitioners and students how to apply pharmacokinetic
principles to drug therapy in day-to-day practice. It is a useful addition
to any pharmacy reference library.
Laurence A. Goldberg
(consultant pharmacist from Bury, Lancashire) |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal