Route of Administration! The way a drug/therapeutic enters your body. I thought it would be useful to go over some of the basics so we all have a better understanding of why certain drugs are injected into our body and why others are given in pill form. It all has to do with what the end goal is and how the drug works!
In the post I start by describing two important definitions that I use to classify the different types. The first is “bioavailability”, which describes what fraction of the delivered dose actually reaches the target to have the desired effect. Ideally this would be 100% but as you’ll see it’s often much lower. Bioavailability can go down for many reasons but often because it is metabolized or excreted from your body instead of reaching the target. To compensate for this loss, the dose is often increased!
The second important definition is the “time to peak” which describes how quickly the drug reaches its maximum concentration in your blood stream. Each route of administration leads to different peak times. In emergency situations you’ll want very quick delivery. Other times it may be okay to have slower onset of effect!
Swipe through to get a graphical summary along with a short description of IV, PO, and IM delivery!
Posted on Instagram on January 18, 2021.