What is known and objective: There are many methods for dosing vancomycin. The purpose of this commentary was to compare open-access vancomycin dosing websites with Vancomycin-Calculator.com and describe how body weight can affect their pharmacokinetic (PK) calculations.
Comment: A vancomycin dosing website, Vancomycin-Calculator.com, was developed to improve the dosing practice at our health system. Nine other vancomycin dosing calculators were identified, including three open-access websites. Each website uses a different dosing method. Most of the websites calculated similar doses for patients with normal body weight. Vancomycin-Calculator.com was the only website to calculate practical doses for obese patients, and it calculated higher daily doses for underweight patients compared to other websites.
What is new and conclusion: Vancomycin-Calculator.com is an open-access vancomycin dosing website that was developed using the Bauer PK method. Compared with three other websites, PK calculations resulted in significant differences for underweight and obese patients.
Keywords: Calculator; Dosing; Pharmacokinetics; Vancomycin; Website.
Published 2016. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.