Measuring Ibuprofen

[krystalleigh]

My rat Preem hurt his arm last night by getting it caught in the door to his cage (which was entirely my fault and I feel SO bad!) and his arm and foot today are quite swollen. The vet in town that sees rats is closed today and possibly tomorrow since it's a holiday. After googling and reading forums it seems like if there are no visible breaks that the vet would just administer metacam or something similar and that I could basically do that myself by giving him infant liquid ibuprofen. I went out and bought a scale and weighed him (approximately just over 500 g), and bought infant advil. I read that the dose for rats is 15 mg-60mg/lb. Since he weighs roughly 1 pound but is 2 years old I thought I would give him 40mg to be on the safe side.

The problem is that the syringe that came with the advil is in mL, not mg. So I converted 40 mg to mL and got 0.04. Is this right? I obviously couldn't measure that amount, seeing how the smallest measurement for the syringe was .5 mL. Frustrated, I ended up giving him 3 drops in some baby food. I'm not sure if that's even enough to do anything but I can try again in a few hours. I'm curious how everyone else measures it, or am I missing something? Also, do you think that I should take him in to the vet or keep trying the advil if I can measure it properly and see if the swelling goes down? Last night he stayed in the bottom of his cage with his brother and was favouring the arm for awhile but seems to be quite mobile today despite the swelling. Thanks in advance!

 

[victoria]

There are two dosage guidelines for Ibuprofen, you're going with the higher one. If 40 mg is what you are trying to give (and you are using Advil Infant Drops) you would need to give 1 ml (at a concentration of 200 mg/5 ml, each ml contains 40 mg). I would personally start at a lower dose (say 15 mg/kg) and increase it only if he's not getting relief. (If he weighs 500g, his dose would be 7.5 mg or .19 ml's/cc's.)

Most of us use 1 cc or .5 cc syringes to measure medication, the one in the Advil package is way to big for rat doses. You can get them from any pharmacy, just ask for an insulin syringe behind the counter and ask the pharmacist to cut off/remove the needle. (If you have a sharp cutter at home you can do this yourself.)

 

[krystalleigh]

I did buy the 200mL/5mL liquid infant stuff. So according to the dosages, since he weighs .5 kg the low dose would be 5 mg and the high dose would be 15? I'll give him .19mL tonight and see how he does. I told a friend who has rats and had a sick rat what happened and she dropped off a new 1.0 mL syringe so I should be able to measure out the right dosage. Thanks so much! Hopefully this helps. He doesn't seem to be in pain, but it is quite swollen.

 

[victoria]

Sprains can cause a lot of swelling and be painful, but Metacam (or Ibu) can ease a lot of that. He should bounce back in a few days. It's always a good idea to keep a few of the small syringes around when you have rats (as well as a digital scale, which you already got this weekend.)

 

[lilspaz68]

I am getting .19 cc (at 15 mg/kg) and .38 cc (at 30 mg/kg)...

when you wanted to give him 40 mg/lb...you would've been giving him a full 1 cc/ml syringe. As the ibu is 40 mg/ml or there is 40 mg of ibuprofen in 1 ml of the solution.