Medication Monitoring

Drug Monitoring, Therapeutic Drug Monitoring

What To Think About

• Medicine blood levels can be measured in a person who may have taken an overdose.
• The dose of a medicine may need to be adjusted until the right blood levels are achieved. Dosage of a medicine may also need to be changed if a person's lifestyle changes (such as becoming more active) or if the person begins taking another medicine that can affect the medicine being monitored.
• A prothrombin time (PT) test is a different type of monitoring test. It is used to monitor the effects of the blood-thinning medicine warfarin (Coumadin). A PT test may also be called international normalized ratio (INR). For more information, see the medical test Prothrombin Time.
• Many medicines do not have established therapeutic levels or methods to measure them. The therapeutic level is determined either by how a person's symptoms are responding to the medicine or by the onset of an adverse reaction.

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Author:	Bets Davis, MFA	Last Updated: November 17, 2008
Medical Review:	Kathleen Romito, MD - Family Medicine E. Gregory Thompson, MD - Internal Medicine
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