What is a prophylactic dose?

The prophylactic dose is treatment administered with the intention of preventing disease from occurring. These prophylactic doses are often lower than the doses needed to treat the disease after it has already developed, but it is not always the case. Antibiotics, blood thinners and stomach acids are commonly administered in preventive doses. Immunization can also be considered prophylactic doses because they are administered to prevent full -fledged infections by various diseases. Different antibiotics are given to different risk groups. For example, patients with syndrome obtained by immunodeficiency (AIDS) who have a low number of white blood cells often regularly take low doses of different antibiotic drugs to prevent certain infections. Patients with cardiac defects, especially patients who had a surgery that replaced the heart valve often use prophylactic antibiotics before dental work or other procedures to prevent the development of cardiac infection called endocarditis. Children with sickle diseaseThey take regular antibiotics to prevent bacterial infections.

Another class of drugs commonly administered at a prophylactic dosing is blood thinner. Patients in hospital have an increased risk of developing blood clots because they are often immobile for a significant part of the hospital stay. For this reason, patients are often administered by prophylactic doses of drugs such as heparin or enoxaparin, in the hospital, as these drugs can prevent blood clotting.

Some hospitalized patients are also administered by a prophylactic dose of drugs that can reduce the production of acid in the stomach. The drug class used for this purpose is often a pinhibitors of a roton pump (PPI). In the middle of patients is particularly important to use the prophylactic dose of these drugs, including patients for mechanical ventilation, those prepared for general anesthesia and those who take medicines in the familycorticosteroids. PPI prevents complications over the excessive production of gastric acid, including conditions such as aspiration of pneumonia and gastritis, acute inflammation of the stomach lining.

Many people consider immunization to be another way to provide a prophylactic dose. In this case, however, the therapy is not a medicine, but rather a molecule that replicates part of the bacteria or virus that can cause human disease. For example, measles vaccination is given to children as a number of shots. The shot content includes low doses of virus that cause measles. This dose is not enough to develop the disease, but it is sufficient for the patient's body to develop antibodies Protivirus in the case of future infection.