Tag: Drug calculation

Originating from 1950s insurance data, ideal body weight (IBW) was not initially intended for drug dosing, yet it has become a metric used by clinicians to perform **ideal body weight dosing** for specific medications, particularly for patients at extremes of body weight. This practice aims to prevent drug over- or under-exposure by accounting for differences in body composition.

Dosing medication for children is complex due to physiological changes; for instance, body fat can increase from just 1-2% in a preterm neonate to 20-25% in a 1-year-old. This variability is why various methods, including the historical query of **What is Dilling's formula?**, were developed.

Over 75% of pediatric prescriptions in North America and Europe have historically been considered "off-label" due to the scarcity of pediatric-specific research. A common and straightforward tool used to estimate a child's medication dosage from an adult dose is **Clark's rule**, which bases the calculation on the child's weight. This practice helps in the process of preventing potentially dangerous dosing errors in children, whose bodies process drugs differently than adults.