Question

Express answer to the nearest tenth.

The recommended dosage of Paraplatin for ovarian cancer is 360 mg/m2. The client's BSA is 167 m2. What dosage should the client recieve? _____ mg

Answer 1

Dosage calculation using Body Surface Area (BSA) is more accurate than using body weight.

It is particularly applied to cytotoxics and other drugs which require an accurate individual dose.

In the given question, BSA of the client is given as 167 m²

Let's see what is BSA.

Total surface area of the body is the BSA.

Height and weight of a person is required to calculate his BSA.

Average adult BSA is 1.7 m².

1.9 m² for adult males and 1.6 m² for adult females.

A maximum BSA of 2 m² is commonly used in drug calculations.

In normal case BSA will not exceed upto 167 m²

So in the given question, most probably the BSA will be 1.67 m^2.

so,please check it out before you answer the question. It may be a typing error.

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Now let's see how can we solve such calculations.

In this question, the dose required is 360 mg/m²

and the BSA of the patient is 167 m²

Dose per m²   = 360

BSA in m² = 167

That is ,for every m² of patient's surface area, we will need 360 mg of drug paraplatin.

So, this patient will need 167 lots of 360 mg drug.

For that, simply multiply the dose by the patient's BSA.

That is, the formula for drug calculation is

DOSE REQUIRED = DOSE PER m² × BSA

​​​​​​By substituting the values in the question,

  Dose required = 360 × 167

= 60120 mg

It seems to be impossible. No??

Lets calculate the same with 1.6 m² .

Substituting the values as

The dose in m² = 360

BSA in m² = 1.67

^​​Total dose required = 360 × 1.67

= 601.2

so value to the nearest tenth is 600 mg.

Note : please go through the quetion once more to make sure that the BSA given is correct.