Impact of new tool on dosing pediatric meds

Something as basic as obtaining an accurate weight on a young patient can be a monumental task in disadvantaged areas, or in emergency situations. Yet accurate weights are critical in terms of medication dosing, fluid volumes, device sizing, and many other treatments and applications.

To address this problem, Susan M. Abdel-Rahman, PharmD, Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics of Kansas City, Missouri, has developed a new tool to assess children's weight without the use of a scale, and it has proved in studies to be effective within 10% of a weight determined on a traditional scale method.

"We can comfortably say, at present, that we have the most accurate and robust weight estimation strategy available," Abdel-Rahman says.