How many times have you done this?

You grabbed a “tablespoon” out of the silverware drawer, poured the cough syrup in and swallowed.

Maybe you got one tablespoon, as directed. Maybe you got one and one-half tablespoons. Maybe you got less because you didn’t want to spill any and so you poured very carefully.

The point of this study is that we all need to know what measure to use for which medicine.

Remember to ask your doctor or pharmacist about this.

Journal Watch

“Many patients and parents use kitchen spoons to dose liquid medications, but the accuracy of spoon dosing is questionable. These authors conducted a simple study in 195 university students to examine the effect of spoon size on dosing of liquid medication.”

…”When asked to judge their dosing accuracy, participants had above average confidence that they had poured the correct dose into the medium and larger spoons.”

Researchers say under-dosing and over-dosing occurred. That is not such a big deal if you are taking standard drugstore cold medicine. For more dose-sensitive medications, using the wrong measuring tool could lead to problems.

The expert comment on this study says:

Comment: “Although the dosing errors demonstrated in this study might seem inconsequential for a cold medication, the cumulative effect of 20% variation in the delivery of medications could have considerable clinical impact for drugs with tighter risk-benefit profiles. Clearly, the size of the spoon is important when patients pour their medications. We should encourage parents to use accurate measures (e.g., measuring cap, dropper, or syringe) rather than convenient utensils for liquid-medication dosing.”

— F. Bruder Stapleton, MD

Source: Journal Watch Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, January 27, 2010

Citation: Annals of Internal Medicine, 2010 Jan 5; 152:66.