A single intravenous dose of tritiated digoxin was given to five obese patients before and after a mean loss of 102 pounds in weight. There were no significant differences in the blood concentrations of digoxin before and after the weight reduction. Likewise, there were no significant differences in the blood concentrations of digoxin when these data were corrected for fat-free body weight.These findings are consistent with the thesis that fat-free body weight is a more important determinant of the blood concentration of digoxin than total body weight is.The clinical implication of this study is that digoxin dosage may be erroneously high if calculated on the basis of total body weight for obese individuals.
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