Renal Dosing

Hey, Brian, what's renal dosing? Renal dosing? Renal refers to the kidneys, so renal dosing has to do with what dosage of a medication you're given and sometimes you have to make an adjustment to the dosage that you're given if you have renal impairment. So a lot of times medications build up in the blood system. And so they're therapeutic. They're useful because they built up in the blood. The kidneys remove the medication essentially from the blood. So if you have kidney impairment, the medication can build up in the blood, and too much medication sometimes can cause toxicity or damage. So there are a lot of medications that there's a standard dose for people who have healthy kidneys. But you have to give a different dose, usually a lower dose of that same medication if somebody has a kidney impairment. We've had a couple of cases in the office recently where the doctor made a big mistake because the patients had kidney problems, yet the doctor didn't use the renal dose. As a result, the medication built up in the patient's bloodstream and caused a severe injury. In one case, for example, the medication was Valtrex, which is used for shingles. And because the patient had a kidney problem, too much Valtrex was given. And as a result, they suffered a very significant injury. We had a similar case with another medication called methotrexate, which most of the time simply should not be given to a patient with significant kidney impairment because the physician made a mistake and didn't take account of the person's injured kidneys, that person was very severely injured. So that's what renal dosing is. And that's sort of how it relates to medical malpractice.