In honor of Labor Day, Monday, September 7, 2009, we’re going to offer RxCalc FREE for one day.
For 24-hours you’ll be able to download RxCalc for nothing, so tell all your friends.
Don’t forget, Monday, September 7, 2009 is RxCalc for free day!
Category Archives: RxCalc
RxCalc 1.0.1 now available
We’ve been sorting through some user feedback, it’s great stuff! We noticed a recurring theme, “Why can’t I make adjustments after my initial calculation on a New Start.” We found that strange because you can definitely make adjustments after the initial calculation’s are performed. So, we did a New Start, and it became quite obvious why people were confused. The results table fills the screen perfectly and there’s no indication you should scroll down to make your adjustment!
So, we did a quick release to fix the problem. In 1.0.1 the screen will show and scroll to the bottom, where the adjustment fields are, right away. It’s animated so you now know there’s more data above if you’re interested in viewing it. The critical data lies at the bottom of the screen; Tau and Estimated Dose, plus Desired Dose, Given Every, and Calculate. We hope this clears things up. (NOTE: The values used in the illustrations were NOT entered by a Clinical Pharmacist, or a healthcare professional. They are for illustration purposes only.)
Guidelines for Monitoring Vancomycin against Staphylococus aureus Infection
Medscape.com: “The Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists have issued therapeutic guidelines for monitoring of vancomycin treatment for Staphylococcus aureus infection. The summary of consensus recommendations is published in the August 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Disease.”
Some of the clinical recommendations include:
- Dosing based on actual body weight, even for obese patients.
- Measuring trough levels drawn just prior to the fourth dose.
- Keeping trough concentrations greater than 10 mg/L and even higher, 15-20 mg/L, for complicated infections.
- Consider alternate therapy for patients with CLcr 70-100 mL/minute and a targeted AUC/MIC > 400.
Additional clinical recommendations can be found in the guidelines, which are available for free in PDF format here.
Cockcroft-Gault remains standard for pharmacokinetic calculations, for now.
A recent article in Hospital Pharmacy presented a review of literature comparing various methods used for estimating renal function and how those equations are best used when applied to drug dosage adjustments. The article, “Drug Dosage Adjustment Using Renal Estimation equations: A Review of the Literature” discusses literature surrounding the Cockcroft-Gault (CG), the abbreviated Modification of Diet in Renal Disease equation (abbrMDRD), and to a lesser extent the original Modification of Diet in Renal Disease equation. Although promising, there simply isn’t enough literature to support the use of the abbrMDRD equation in pharmacy practice. The article concludes that “although the abbrMDRD equation has many advantages as compared with the CG equation, too little research has been completed at this time to recommend the clinical use of the abbrMDRD equation in pharmacy practice.”
RxCalc currently uses the Cockcroft-Gault equation to estimate renal function for all pharmacokinetic calculations. Apple Core Labs will continue to evaluate new and emerging data, and use this information to make changes to RxCalc when deemed appropriate.
All quiet on the western front
Since the release of RxCalc on July 4th things have been pretty quiet around the labs. We’ve been working through our list of “love to have features” and have trimmed it down to a select few.
Now comes the hard part, actually doing the work, and delivering a new release.
If you’re already using RxCalc you may be saying to yourself “Hey, I just bought a copy, what does that mean for me?” Good question! The answer is, you’ll receive a free upgrade!
Thanks for supporting RxCalc, we really do appreciate it.
Going once, going twice…
To help get the ball rolling on RxCalc we’ve decided to give away a few fully functional copies.
So, the first five healthcare professionals, or healthcare students, to e-mail their full name to us at support@applecorelabs.com, with the title “RxCalc Offer”, will receive a promotional code that will allow you to download a copy of RxCalc from iTunes.
Yes, it’s that simple.
We promise we won’t give your e-mail address, or any personal information, to anyone.
Good Luck!
iPhone/iPod Touch required by PharmD program
AppleInsider: “The University of Florida is the second school in as many months to announce that students enrolling in one of its curriculums this fall will be required to own either an iPhone or iPod touch, highlighting an increasing role for Apple’s multi-touch devices in higher education.” – RxCalc is a natural fit for the University of Florida’s PharmD program!
Introducing RxCalc
Apple Core Labs first iPhone/iPod Touch application, RxCalc, is now available on the iPhone App Store. RxCalc is a pharmacokinetics calculator designed to help pharmacists, and doctors, compute the most commonly used clinical calculations:
- Pharmacokinetics – New Start
- Pharmacokinetics – Adjust with Levels
- Ideal Body Weight
- Creatnine Clearance