Drug Level Monitoring: v. 2

Monitoring the concentrations of drugs and their metabolites in biological samples is necessary to understand drug action in vivo. Furthermore, drug therapy can be optimized with the aid of drug measurements in serum and pharmacokinetic calculations of dosages for individual patients. As a consequence, clinical laboratories offer a series of drug level assays for routine clinical applications. Therapeutic drug level monitoring has stimulated tremendous interest in this discipline which emerged as a fledgling only three to four decades ago. A thorough understanding of drug level monitoring requires knowledge in a variety of areas, but most importantly, drug analysis, drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics and pharmacology-toxicology. Drug Level Monitoring integrates these diverse disciplines and serves as a guide for selecting suitable analytical procedures and as a reference source for metabolic, pharmacokinetic and pharmacological data. The success of the first volume has led the authors to edit the current Volume II which includes monographs of 16 major drug classes with numerous analogs in current therapeutic use.
Some of the chapters extend and update individual drug monographs in the first volume, for example morphine - morphinans, digoxin- cardiac glycosides, while others are included for the first time eg. calcium channel blockers and H2 antagonists. Both volumes are, therefore, complimentary to each other.