Vancomycin dosing: to AUC or Not?
In this article:
Note: The new vancomycin dosing guidelines have been officially released. Learn what’s changed and how they’ll impact you by reading our guide to the new vancomycin dosing changes here.
This month, the American Journal of Health System Pharmacists published ‘Making the change to area under the curve-based vancomycin dosing’ (Heil EL et al. AJHP. 2018) providing practical advice for implementing an AUC-based vancomycin dosing strategy for adult patients.
The paper highlights population pharmacokinetic modelling with the use of Bayesian software – what many believe to be the gold standard of clinical decision support for vancomycin dosing. As the founder of DoseMeRx – a clinical decision support tool built on the principles of Bayesian dosing – I share this view alongside the authors.
Discussing the numerous benefits of Bayesian dosing, often now referred to as ‚precision dosing,‘ the authors clearly identify a few advantages to the modelling approach:
- Reduces a clinician’s reliance on timing of taking blood samples
- Less samples required to accurately estimate AUC
- Samples can be taken before steady state
- Bayesian models are dynamic – continuously learning over time
At DoseMe, we support all dosing approaches of vancomycin and have helped several hospitals with the transition to AUC-based decision making – calculating AUC side-by-side with trough targets – and even helping by analyzing clinical datasets to aid hospitals and health systems in supporting a move.
Whether your institution is already dosing to AUC targets, or considering what preparation will be required, we offer support for a wide range of vancomycin dosing approaches including trough, AUC, and AUC:MIC. DoseMeRx can be configured to match your institution’s protocols and can be customized over time according to your preferences.
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About the Author
Robert McLeay, PhD is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at DoseMe. At DoseMe, he combines his love of modeling biological data with his background in IT to provide safer dose optimization via easy-to-use software designed for physicians.