Clinical pharmacokinetics

The premise of the target concentration strategy and its support by therapeutic drug monitoring is that drug concentrations in plasma relate more predictably to drug effects than do drug doses. This is because drug doses are subject to individual variation in drug absorption, distribution, and elimination. Pharmacokinetics can be used to characterize these processes. Drug distribution volume and elimination clearance are the basic pharmacokinetic parameters that govern the disposition of an absorbed drug dose. These two parameters also determine the elimination half-life of a drug. This chapter presents both the mathematical basis and clinical application of pharmacokinetics.