Plasma Half Life Case Study

Why is a drug’s plasma half-life important to health care providers?
Half life is important in determining the frequency of a drug administered in order to maintain a continuous drug effect.
Identify 2 diseases/conditions that can increase the plasma half-life of a drug.
It can be prolonged when liver or kidney disease is present.
What could happen if a medication with a long half-life continues to be given to a patient with one of the diseases/conditions identified in above?
Patients with hepatic or renal disease, suffer greater incidence of adverse drug effects because they are unable to eliminate the drug effectively.
Perform the necessary calculation as required taking the following information into account:
Your patient has the following order: diazepam (Valium) 10 mg daily.
The patient has cirrhosis of the liver.
Assume, for purposes of this
exercise, that the half-life of Valium is exactly 24 hours.
Calculate the amount of Valium that could potentially be in this patient’s plasma at the conclusion of 5 days of taking it as ordered.
Round your answers to the tenths place. Day 2 has been calculated for you.
Dosage Calculation Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 t0 = 10 mg t1 = 5 mg t2 = 7.5 mg t3 = 8.8 mg t4 = 9.4 mg Dose = 10 mg Dose =10mg Dose = 10mg Dose = 10 mg Total = 15 mg Total = 17.7mg Total = 18.8mg Total = 19.5 mg
What is the most outstanding thing you learned from doing this exercise?
The most valuable thing I learned the importance of following a medication instructions especially for a patient that is health compromised.
What impact does plasma half-life have when you consider the patient who may be addicted or abusing a medication such as Valium?

What is the difference between an acute dystonia and tardive dyskinesia?
Dystonia is characterized by muscle spasm, twitching, facial grimacing, and torticollis.
Tardive dyskinesia is a more serious condition that may develop after long term antipsychotic therapy. This condition involves involuntary movements of the lips, jaw, tongue and
extremities.
One of the major problems in treating the chronically psychotically ill patient is medication compliance. From your reading, why do you think that is a problem? For example, in the case of patients that suffer from schizophrenia the negative symptoms like low motivation, neglect thoughs overpower the patients’ need to get well. This is why they need someone for assistance.
In your own words, describe the difference between positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
Positive symptoms are psychotic behaviors, though or feelings added. People with these symptoms lose the sense of reality. Some of the positive symptoms are hallucinations, that may present them self’s as visual or auditory hallucination, though disorders and movement disorder.
Negative symptoms are associated with emotion and behaviors. This is when a behavior is taken away. Many of these symptoms are difficult to diagnose because they can be mistaken for depression.
Describe your understanding of the effect of antipsychotic drug treatment on the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. My understanding of the effect is that antipsychotic drugs mainly treat the positive symptoms of schizophrenia leaving negative symptoms untreated. What will key the health care provider to think that the patient on Lithium is not experiencing a therapeutic level of the drug? When patient still presents maniac or bipolar symptoms.
What could cause a nontherapeutic blood level even if the patient were taking Lithium as prescribed? Lithium needs to be taken for several days or even weeks, it needs to build up in the system. It does not have a fast effect. kidney function is essential to clearing lithium from the system; patient’s kidney functions would be evaluated.
What will key you to think the patient on Lithium is experiencing toxic effects. If the patient presents diarrhea, dizziness, nausea, stomach pains, vomiting and weakness.