Keppra advice needed

When my oldest was little the pharmacy made a dosage error (off by 10x!) and we were just thinking that was an unbelievable amount of medicine so we looked it up in the PDR (before all this stuff was on the internet). You can look up the standard doses for so many medications, see all patient literature, learn common side effects, be familiar with black box warnings, see which drugs cause bad interactions, see what the pills look like so you can confirm you have the right ones, know if a drug comes in an IV or oral suspension, learn if regular testing for metabolites are helpful, and find out the common dosage amounts as one increases a drug.. and you can check online for this and more! Because you don't want your child to be poisoned by mistake, and it can help you start asking questions if a doctor seems to be going off the standard track. Know your kid's weight in kg because dosages are computed in metric (e.g. mg/kg). I tend to use medscape reference as one reliable source that has a nice overall format but there are other reputable sources.That said, this is not necessarily some strange occurance. Various neurologists will increase doses until the seizures are controlled or the side effects are terrible (or the person is toxic). Different people respond very differently and depending on how a drug is broken down in the body, different enzyme issues are beyond me, there can be a wider range of ok than just the standard ranges. My daughter is above standard dose for one drug she's on. And I like that our neuro was cautious but hopeful as things improved every time it was increased so she went outside her comfort zone but she won't go any higher than a bit above the published range. But my daughter might be able to take a lot more of that drug as her metabolite tests do not show she's has a huge amount in her system, some people have needed a higher metabolite amount in some studies to get control so I've wondered if that could be the case for my child, side effects were not a problem when it was the only drug she took, minor issues now but she's on two drugs now. So you might see studies supporting a much larger dose... or not. I prefer a doctor who shares this info with me, but I ask at what dose they would expect to see results (and I look up the therapeutic range) and so when we start going higher and higher, more questions come out about how much room is left to go up and so forth. Everyone differs in their comfort levels in what they want to know during an appt with a neuro - and sometimes I've looked stuff up and don't need to ask stuff. I also have gotten pretty friendly with the pharmacists, they can be really helpful. Yours is definitely making sure you are aware of issues to follow up on with the neurologist's office. I check that the script matches the schedule to increase the dose is as I understand it (sometimes they differ in slight ways on moarning or evening dose to increase first), pharmacists are pretty open about sharing side effects that people have shared with them (children's hospital pharmacy so very kid aware).

I know that medications have levels set for certain ages. But I also know that as the body grows the dosages need to go up An example would be me when I was changing from a kid to a teen. I srated having a few more seizures so we went to doc. my dosage was increased. It was changed again in a little over a month then changed again i a month. All in all my dosaged changed 5 times in 6-8 months. I went from a kid weighing 85 lbas and was 4'8" tall to a teen that was 5'6" weighing 135 lbs. I still had seizures but there were fewer and were about 3 every month or 2.SO don't change and do call his neurologist again. Keep him on the same dosage until the neurologists varifies the dosage and the pharmcy eills the RX. Every time I go in to get my Keppra and there is a new pharmacist in I always have to talk to him since he asks does your doctor know you are takimg this much medication along with your vimpat. I always ask him to look at WHO prescribed them and yes I know it is a lot of medication.  Relax and get answers from the neurologist You might also have him call the pharmacist and varify the dosage change I hope this helps and your son gets seizure free Joe

My son is 4 and he weighs 50 pounds and he takes 2.5ml of Keppra BID (2x a day) and his neurologist has advised us to increase that dose to 3ml once he reaches 60 pounds so I would agree with Angela below me that the dosage you're talking about seems like a lot to me but with that being said I am by no means an expert on seizures or meds. I don't know if they increase the keppra by that much based on the kind of seizure, the length, the frequency, etc. Unfortunately it is not unheard of for the pharmacy/pharmacist to make a mistake on the dosage so I would be just as concerned as you and I am just hoping and praying that since this post is from a few days ago that a doctor has rectified this by now!!! Good luck