The Pigloo Forums

[Charybdis]

I am using this drug for some of my pigs with heart conditions, as are some other people I know. However, because we don't have scientific studies and the drug hasn't been widely used, dosing has been a matter of empirical exchange.

Most commonly, it seems that people are dosing Lotensin at about 1 mg/kg once daily. Pinta has said that her pigs get at least 1mg/kg daily and up to 3mg/kg daily if they are in heart failure.

Since this drug has only recently been used in guinea pigs, it isn't available in suspension. It comes in a pill. A vet or pharmacist might compound it for you in a so that you could dose the pig more easily.

Or, what seems to be more common, the vet can call the prescription into a pharmacy and you compound it (mix it with water) yourself. HOWEVER you must be very careful in doing this, as with all medications, because it is very easy to make a math slip-up and wind up with the wrong dosage.

For instance, just now I was reading DodgerPig's thread on Mo and realized that something was very different about our dosages, but it was the same prescribing vet. I called her up and had her describe how she compounds the Lotensin in water, which turned out to be very different from the way I was doing it. Way different amounts.

I thought that DodgerPig was giving 4 times the 'normal' dose of Lotensin, when actually I was giving 1/4 the normal dose. Here is why. I was going off a discussion that I had with Josephine and Pinta on GL about concentrating Rain's Lotensin. Here's the page:

http://www.guinealynx.info/forums/viewtopic.php?p=504287#504287

Problem is, Josephine's second calculation isn't correct. It results in a pig getting 1/4 the commonly practiced dosage of 1mg/kg. And I never checked the math. SO. Anyone who is compounding Lotensin using that formula should not be doing so.

The safest way (for us math idiots) to dose a medication is to get it down to 1 mg/ml.

So if I have a 5 mg pill, I add it to 5 ml of water. Then I have 5mg/5ml or, 1 mg/ml.

If I have a 10 mg pill, I would either:
Add one pill to 10 ml of water
Add 1/2 pill to 5 ml of water

If I had a 20mg pill (like DodgerPig) I would either:
Add one pill to 20 ml of water
Add 1/2 pill to 10ml of water
Add 1/4 pill to 5ml of water

If you are more comfortable with compounding, and want to give your pig a smaller amount at a time, you can mess with the medication:water ratio. DodgerPig, for instance, is putting 1/2 a 20mg pill (so, 10mg) in 5ml of water. This makes her concentration 2mg/ml and she only has to give Mo .5ml, not the whole syringe.

Hopefully I haven't confused you as much as I have confused myself. And I apologize to anyone who got a Lotensin compounding rate from me. You should probably do what I did not do, which is to DOUBLECHECK THE CALCULATIONS with someone who is good at math.

[Chad]

Added to Medical Reference Sticky. Thank you for posting this.