Dosebånd

Dosebånd, commonly translated as dose banding in English, is a dosing strategy used primarily in chemotherapy to standardize prescribed doses into discrete bands. The calculated dose for a patient—often based on body surface area, weight, or age—is mapped to a nearby predefined dose band. The chosen band then informs the selection of an available vial size and the final administered dose. The aim is to improve safety and efficiency by reducing bespoke calculations and vial wastage, while preserving therapeutic intent.

Defining the bands is a local process guided by pharmacokinetics, drug-specific properties, and institutional policy. Bands are chosen to balance accuracy with practicality, and may involve rounding to the nearest band or to the nearest standard dose within a band. Dose-banding is commonly used for cytotoxic and biologic drugs where standard vial sizes exist and where rapid, repeated dosing is routine. It can also support inventory management and logistics in busy clinical settings.

Potential drawbacks include the risk that rounding alters drug exposure, particularly for drugs with narrow therapeutic windows. Dose-banding requires careful validation and monitoring in such cases. It is not a substitute for individualized dosing where guidelines or patient factors (renal or hepatic impairment, obesity, pediatrics) necessitate specific dose calculations.

Implementation typically requires governance, pharmacist oversight, and software that maps patient data to dose bands. It is described in pharmacology and health-system literature under dose banding, and is used in health services to improve efficiency while maintaining patient safety.