Disclaimer: I am a mental health patient, I do not have any education in
health care and I am more of a computer programmer and a mathematician than
any authority over matters concerning health care. (c) PamiPetteri 2020.
 
How to do calculations involving medications: The "standard way" of denoting
how medications are dealt out in the Finnish health care system is writing
morning(milligrams)+day(milligrams)+evening(milligrams) for the medicine in
question, for example an example dosage of quetiapine (Seroquel, Ketipinor,
Quetiapin) could be 100mg+100mg+400mg, so the first 100mg is for morning, the
second 100mg is for day and the 400mg is for evening. If something like
oxazepam is given in addition to the quetiapine it could be written like:
15mg+15mg+15mg, that is a quite high dose of oxazepam, all in all
(15+15+15)mg=45mg daily. The daily dose of quetiapine would be
(100+100+400)mg=600mg, a standard dose for a depressed patient, but if the
patient is schizophrenic or manic, a higher daily dose could be needed,
usually no higher than 800mg, and it could be put as 100mg+100mg+600mg=800mg
(per day). There are things like the chlorpromazine equivalent (CPZ) for
antipsychotics like quetiapine and the benzodiazepine equivalency (BZD) for
anxiolytics and sleep medications, that are of the benzodiazepine class, and
it could be counted thus: 15mg of oxazepam is equivalent to 5 mg of diazepam
when the ratio 3:1 is used, so 5mg of diazepam = 15 mg of oxazepam, and then
the ratio is 1:3 (in weight, usually milligrams, mg). Another converter uses a
2:1, or 1:2 ratio for BZD equivalency, for oxazepam and diazepam so 1 mg of
diazepam would be equivalent to 2 mg of oxazepam. For example: 15mg of
oxazepam, the standard dose for one tablet would equal to 7.5mg of diazepam,
and it is usually rounded up to the next whole milligram, so it would be 8mg
of diazepam.
 
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