In this episode, I’ll discuss Bayesian dosing.
New vancomycin guidelines were published in March 2020. These guidelines have recommended that AUC/MIC be used to monitor vancomycin instead of trough values, and that Bayesian dosing software may be used to dose vancomycin and achieve the desired AUC/MIC.
Bayesian dosing is based on Baye’s Theorem which was developed by an 18th-century mathemetician. The Bayesian method involves starting with an initial probability of an event based on prior knowledge and then updating the probability of an event based on new knowledge.
Bayesian models have been applied to various fields from credit scoring to the diagnostic process.
Applied to vancomycin dosing this means that an assumption is made on what a patient’s vancomycin level will be in response to a given dose based on prior population-level pharmacokinetic data. Then when a vancomycin level is obtained, this level is used to inform the prior model and improve upon them to determine the dose of vancomycin to achieve the desired AUC/MIC in a specific patient.
In this way, an individualized dose calculation is made for each patient that keeps getting more accurate with each vancomycin level drawn.
Members of my Hospital Pharmacy Academy have access to an in-depth breakdown of the new vancomycin guidelines as well as over 100 Masterclass trainings for clinical skills in critical care, emergency medicine, infectious disease, and general hospital pharmacy. To get immediate access to these and more resources to help you in your practice go to pharmacyjoe.com/academy.
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