Question

A 3yo girl has been diagnosed with acute bacterial otitis media in your clinic and requires amoxicillin for treatment.  The parents say she doesn’t take medicine every well and would appreciate the lowest VOLUME per dose.  She weighs 32 lbs.  What are the different dosing strategies using the current formulation of liquid amoxicillin?

Answer

Amoxicillin comes in 125mg/5mL, 200mg/5mL, 250mg/5mL, and 400mg/5mL and the recommended daily dose for bacterial acute otitis media is 90mg/kg/day twice daily for 7 days. She weighs 32lbs, which is 14.5kg, so she would need 1305mg per day, or 650mg per dose. For the different concentrations it could be:

• For 125mg/5mL – 26mL per dose
• For 200mg/5mL – 16mL per dose
• For 250mg/5mL – 13mL per dose

If you want to have the LOWEST volume, then using the 400mg/5mL concentration would be 8.1mL per dose and you would need to dispense 115mL for a 7 day prescription.