Improper Dosage?

[mookman]

Hi -- I was wondering if anyone has any insight regarding the proper dosage of sulfatrim for a hedgehog.

Our little girl has a UTI and was prescribed sulfatrim at a dose of 0.4 ml twice per day. This is a lot of medicine (she was struggling to get it down), about 10 times the 0.05 dose of Baytril she was taking earlier.

I am thinking that it may have been intended to be 0.04ml (not 0.4ml -- ten times as much!!) twice per day. Can anyone help? I will call the vet when they open, but I am just wondering if anyone has any experience with sulfatrim.

Also, if we did give her the wrong dose, are there any side effects that anyone knows of for sulfatrim that we should watch out for?

Thanks for any and all help -- I am very worried we may have given her a dose 10 times the amount she was supposed to get.

[Hedgiepets]

.4ml would be the dosage for a 650 gram hedgehog.

[HedgeMom]

.4ml would be the dosage for a 650 gram hedgehog.
Depending on the dilution.

[mookman]

Thanks for the feedback. I am still really confused. I talked with the vet, who said it was an error (and was very apologetic) -- that it should have been .04 ml per dose (twice per day).

So, according to him, we gave her 10 times her normal dosage. She doesn't seem to be showing any ill effects.

Our little girl is 350 grams. The sulfatrim is 240mg/ml.

The .4 seemed like an awful lot. The .04 seems like very little. I don't know what to think!!

I am just thankful that she seems like the high dose, if it was in error, did not seem to do any harm.

Thanks for your help -- I will have to work more with the vet on Monday.

[HedgePigLove]

I'm glad that you were able to reach your vet and find-out the right dosage. The 0.04ml sounds a lot more reasonable to me.

I had a similar experience with a mistake in dosage - had a little hedgie recovering from surgery and the vet had sent me home with metacam - I went to draw-up the dose for the evening and the directions on the bottle read "0.5 cc." This didn't look right to me and so I went and looked in my records for the dosage that I'd given to a 9-pound rabbit a few weeks before: the rabbit had been given 0.4 cc!

My regular vet's office was closed for the day and so I ended-up calling my back-up vet at home (thankfully, she'll take calls if it's urgent) and she agreed that the dose was way too high, even accounting for the dilution. So I gave a much smaller dose (based on the second vet's recommendation) that night and went in to see my regular vet first thing in the morning.

She and I have an excellent relationship and so when I showed-up un-announced and said that I needed to see her as soon as she was available, I was able to see her within minutes. I handed her the bottle and said "this is the wrong dosage, isn't it?". Her face actually turned white and she immediately went out and grabbed the person who had typed in the label / dosing instructions and the person who'd actually made-up the medicine and read them both the riot act. I have never seen her so angry.

Anyway, the hedgie was fine and all was okay in the end, but I was very upset. And now I ask the vet, during the exam, for the dosage that she's prescribing and jot it down in my notes, as a back-up.

[Nancy]

I had that happen once. It was a typo on the label but luckily I had already given enough meds by that time that I immediatly realized 1.2 was very wrong. It was supposed to be .12

I've phoned back and verified a dosage if it seemed high, especially if dealing with a different vet.

I'm glad you were on top of things and questioned the dosage. :)

[Kalandra]

It can and does happen. I've learned over the years to question the dosage and to double check that I was given the correct medication. I've had vet techs who handed me the wrong medication more than once now.

I do the same thing about jotting down dosage and what medication they are going to give me.... I even tell my vet it is because I've been handed the wrong thing by the receptionist or vet tech in the past.