Multiprofessional Critical Care Review: Pediatric 2024 (MCCRCP24ON)-Pharmacology: Five Things You Need to Know

Video Transcription

Video Summary

In this video, Gideon Stitt, a pharmacist and T32 postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Clinical Pharmacology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, discusses five key aspects of pharmacology. He covers topics such as pharmacokinetic principles, changes in developmental pharmacology over time, and special considerations in critical illness. <br />Stitt starts by explaining that pharmacology is the science of drugs, including their origin, composition, genetics, therapeutic use, and toxicology. Pharmacokinetics, on the other hand, is the study of how a drug moves through the body over time, including processes like absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination. He emphasizes that factors like age, gastric pH, fluid accumulation, metabolism, and renal clearance can all impact pharmacokinetic properties. <br />Stitt then delves into the concepts of first-order and zero-order kinetics, which describe how drugs are eliminated from the body. He also explains half-life, which is the time it takes for the concentration of a drug in the plasma to decrease by half, and the concept of steady-state, which is when the amount of drug being administered matches the amount being eliminated. <br />Finally, he discusses the use of loading doses as a shortcut to rapidly achieve therapeutic concentrations of a drug. Stitt concludes by expressing the importance of understanding pharmacology principles to optimize medication therapy in clinical practice.

Keywords

pharmacology

Gideon Stitt

pharmacokinetic principles

developmental pharmacology

critical illness considerations

first-order kinetics

zero-order kinetics

loading doses

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