Dosage ordered 40 mg of secobarbitol (elixir) the stock bottle contains 22 mg of secobarbitol in 5 ml solution. how many ml should patient received?

If the dose requires that a total of 40 mg be given, then you take the ratio of the stock bottle (mg/mL) and solve for the total amount of mL that are needed by multiplying the amount of mL required (x):



Multiply by 5 on both sides to give:



Then solve for x:



Another, possibly quicker, way to solve would be to set up a proportion - one side the stock bottle ratio, and the other side the dosage requirements:



Cross multiply and you get:



And you would solve this the same way as above.

So the patient should receive 9.091 mL of secobarbitol.