For a patient with septic shock having a central line, at what dose of levophed would you consider adding vasopressin if the MAP goal of 65 is not maintained? Would you add if levophed is at 15 mcg/min or wait until it max out at 30 mcg/min?
For a patient with septic shock having a central line, at what dose of levophed would you consider adding vasopressin if the MAP goal of 65 is not maintained? Would you add if levophed is at 15 mcg/min or wait until it max out at 30 mcg/min?
That is a huge amount of levophed no? As in turn your insides black and toes fall off kinda levophed.I add it at 0.1 mcg/kg/min. I'm at least paying lip service to the findings of the VAAST study which suggested that you got benefit from starting it early.
Max dose levophed? As @jdh71 said, the limit is institution dependent. We stop at 3 mcg/kg/min because there's diminishing returns after 1 mcg/kg/min, and after 3 the presets on the pumps no longer work. Could you go higher? Sure. You could put the bag on a rapid infuser but... I wouldn't recommend it.
That is a huge amount of levophed no? As in turn your insides black and toes fall off kinda levophed.
Every hospital I have been to still does mcg/min for pressors in the ICU Unless it’s an anesthesiologist run ICU. In the OR we have always used mcg/kg/min which has always made more sense to me as mcg/min doesn’t usually mean much in our obese population.
Yeah, I work mostly in community hospitals that have 200-400 beds. I absolutely hate academics and haven't gotten much locums work in large hospitals.The 3 mcg/kg/min? Yea, it's a ridiculous amount of levo. It's physiologically useless at that level, but it makes the numbers on the monitor look nice for a short time. We only ever reach those levels when there's a family issue.
I'm surprised you're still finding a lot of places where they do mcg/min in the ICU. Smaller hospitals practicing 10-20yr old critical care medicine, sure, but places with a good pharmacy presence and especially academic places should have converted over to weight-based dosing for almost all pressors.