Re:The history behind aspirin 81
by saulrh on Sunday November 26, 2023 @04:11PM
(#38425061)
> Having nice round numbers is of no benefit to a patient.
At our current level of logistical sophistication, the benefit-to-the-patient is that they can get their medications at all.
I agree that in a perfect world every prescription would start with a computation, based on body weight and historical susceptibility and suchlike, to determine precisely the right dosage. However, I also don't think we're there yet, logistically speaking. I don't think that you can reasonably prescribe "take 6 milliliters of this" or "take thirteen of these"; patients would mess that up reliably even if they were in perfect health and had perfect vision. And we can't stock thirty different sizes of pill; each size of pill takes up already-limited shelf space, increases cost of packaging and logistics, and increases the likelihood of dosing error. So doctors can't yet prescribe precisely the dosage they should be able to. I'm sure that there are cases where they do - drugs with narrow therapeutic ranges administered in hospital settings where they can be precisely dispensed by IV - but for stuff that's being sent home with patients, we're just not there yet.
(Sadly, even things like pillpack won't save us, because doctors can't depend on the availability of custom pill-stamping when they make a prescription - they have to assume that the lowest-common-denominator pharmacy is being used to fill the prescription.)
At our current level of logistical sophistication, the benefit-to-the-patient is that they can get their medications at all.
I agree that in a perfect world every prescription would start with a computation, based on body weight and historical susceptibility and suchlike, to determine precisely the right dosage. However, I also don't think we're there yet, logistically speaking. I don't think that you can reasonably prescribe "take 6 milliliters of this" or "take thirteen of these"; patients would mess that up reliably even if they were in perfect health and had perfect vision. And we can't stock thirty different sizes of pill; each size of pill takes up already-limited shelf space, increases cost of packaging and logistics, and increases the likelihood of dosing error. So doctors can't yet prescribe precisely the dosage they should be able to. I'm sure that there are cases where they do - drugs with narrow therapeutic ranges administered in hospital settings where they can be precisely dispensed by IV - but for stuff that's being sent home with patients, we're just not there yet.
(Sadly, even things like pillpack won't save us, because doctors can't depend on the availability of custom pill-stamping when they make a prescription - they have to assume that the lowest-common-denominator pharmacy is being used to fill the prescription.)