Prevacid Solutab Advice Please

[Anonymous]

Hi all, here’s a post for some quick advice, hopefully when I get the time I will post the long version to try and get some ‘big picture’ help (we have so many issues at the moment, its hard to know where to start!).

Our daughter has been prescribed Prevacid solutabs and we could use some advice on how to administer them correctly. The pharmacist and doctor were not much help here. initially she was prescribed 6mg once a day (a joke I know!) – btw she is 4 months old and about 14 lbs. After many sleepless, insane nights, her ped. has finally agreed to up her dosage to 8mg 3 times a day, after we flooded his office with MARCI kids data.

Now, the problem is how to administer 8 mg from a 15 mg tablet. The first pharmacist told us to dissolve an entire solutab in 4 mls of water, and give her 2.1 mls using a syringe. The problem is that we cant be sure we’re giving her enough beads (or too many) because they’re not evenly distributed in the water, and they always get stuck in the syringe. So, we gave up on this method pretty quickly – now, we have been cutting a 15mg solutab in half, and dissolving it in her cheek, using a bit of water in the syringe to get things lubed up. When we do this, we know we’re not giving her 8 mg, and we also almost always lose some due to wriggly baby syndrome.

We spoke to another pharmacist today, who called the manufacturer of Prevacid, and reported back to us that the manufacturer said that partial doses should NEVER be used (yikes!), and so we should always administer the full tablet. So, the question is – for all you Prevacid-solutab veterans, what are you doing??? What should we do???? Thanks for the advice!!!

Bina2006-11-10 11:6:23

[Anonymous]

i have to tpye quick , baby is on my lap… but i know u can split it in half… just wrap up the other half in tin foil because its light sensitive. and i wouls just give 15mg in the morning… and 7.5 or 8 in the evening… just to make your life easier…if you dont want to cut them up all the time…. i would think that would be fine…

and i always found the best way was to put it on a spoon with 2 drops of water and spoon feed it, or just hold it in their cheek..and rinse what ever is left w/ a little water

[hellbennt]

I have a quick answer, too

in the ‘medicies forum’ there’s a sticky (first/top post) called Treating GERD w/ PPIs

from there, scroll to purple post()

Prevacid 101

there’s a link there of how to administer solutabs & WHEN

[Anonymous]

Myles was on 10mg 3 times per day, so I was dividing his solutabs and they worked fine. I know the company says not to, but many, many of us have had to. How else can you give the right dose?

Dissolving the tablet in water and trying to administer part of it is a disaster….it simply won’t work for the reasons you stated.

I never could get it to work well putting it in the cheek; though others here have.

I would suggest giving her three doses, not two. Babies have very fast metablolism and eliminate the drug from their bodies so quickly…that’s why three doses usually is best, though some babies do well on two. I guess it’s just tial and error with every baby.

I used to divide Myles solutabls in the morning for the day, and store the divided portions in tightly closed medicine bottles. Wrapping them first is probably a good idea, but I hadn’t thought of that at the time.

To administer the drug I would put it in a small medicine cup, add a about 2 mls of water, let it dissolve and then draw it up in a tiny medicine dropper or syringe and give it to him that way. It worked very well for him. I found that bulb syringes or medicine droppers worked better than bigger syringes. I used one that came on a Mylicon dropper because it was just the right size.

Good luck. I hope she’s feeling better soon.

[Anonymous]

Thanks everybody for the great tips and advice,

I guess I’m stuck on how exactly to get Inara to have 8 mg. If we cut the solutab in half, she’s only getting 7.5mg. I dunno – maybe its not that big of a deal to be missing out on .5 mg’s?? But from what we’ve read on MARCI-kids, wouldn’t we want to be overdosing rather than underdosing?? I guess we could give her two 7.5 mg doses, and then give her one full 15 mg solutab as her third dose?? Is this even safe? Those of you who were administering 10 mgs … how did you do it?? Just made guesstimates?

Sorry for being such a neanderthal…I just want to make sure we get this right

[Anonymous]

yes its safe to do it that way, you cant overdose on a ppi.

[Anonymous]

Aidan takes 30 mgs, and yep technically you’re not suposed to split the tablets but I have never had any issues with it, he takes 15 in the am and 15 in the evening, or afternoon. Sometimes he gets it all at once in the afternoon.-and a LOT of the time, Aidan’s dose isn’t split evenly, I try but never can get it and it was too soft for the pill cutter I have, so I don’t really have any idea how much he’s getting at each dose, just that he gets 30 mg a day (usually smaller half in the am and bigger one in the pm)

ohhh mylicon dropper, that’s much better than my rigged up one!!! (I cut the tip off a motrin dropper so it’s big enough not to have the beads get stuck but not to big to spill the beads out)-I’m going to start using that!!! TY TY

[Anonymous]

I was giving 10 mg / 3 times daily. I took two 15 mg tablets and divided each of them into what looked like 1/3 and 2/3 (sounds tricky but it was actually easier than making two exact halves) So, then I’d have 2 – 2/3 pieces (10mg each) and 2- 1/3 mg pieces (which together would equal another 10 mgs). I’m sure it wasn’t always exactly 10 mg each time, but he was getting a full 30 mg divided fairly evenly into three doses.

If you have enough Prevacid, I’d just try that. I was going to suggest it in my last post but I hate to tell people to use more than what their docs prescribe. But it’s really almost impossibe to over dose on a PPI, so personally I’d give her the 10 mg three times per day if you have enough to do that.

[Anonymous]

It’s really hard to divide them so that they’re getting the exact dose, so I think most of us have just had to guess. As long as you’re giving something near the whole dose a day, I don’t think it should matter much. Good luck. Hope the new dose works for you.

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