# URGENT - PLEASE HELP- Zoton Dosage



## OnlyMe (Oct 11, 2007)

Hi,
My DS suffers from Reflux and very long story short, was put on 7.5mg of Zoton three weeks ago. He takes it in one dose and at the time our paed prescribed it DS weighed 16lb 9oz. It worked brilliantly up until a couple of days ago but now the reflux is back and is getting worse ... we're heading towards square one and I'm petrified.
Anyways, I phoned my paeds office this morning to see if we can increase the dose (DS is now around 18lb) but his office is closed until Monday and there's no-one covering for him. I am absolutely terrified of what will happen if we have to keep going the way we are so I'm wondering if you can advise me on the 'normal' and 'maximum' doses of Zoton for babies?
ANY advice is much appreciated. I really want to try to avoid having to go to casualty with him but there's no way we'll last until Monday like this.


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## mazv (Jul 31, 2006)

Hi onlyme,
Sorry to hear DS getting worse again 
The usual dose for babies, under 30kg, is 0.5-1mg per kg once a day in morning. Maximum per day is 15mg.
If ds is 18lb then I'm afraid there isn't a lot of scope to increase the dose . Are you using anything else as well e.g. gaviscon?
I'd call paed's office on Monday for appointment and advice.
Maz x


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## mazv (Jul 31, 2006)

calculated that the maximum dose for ds weight would be 8.2mg, assuming he is 18lb exactly.
Hope this helps 
Maz x


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## OnlyMe (Oct 11, 2007)

Sorry for taking so long to reply Maz.
Thanks a MILLION for the information!
I was in such a panic that I posted on the health board too and one of the ladies on there suggested I ring the hospital so that's what I did and I spoke to the Registrar on call. He told me the max I can give is 8.5mg so we have upped his dose to that and we are also now splitting it giving 2/3 in the morning and 1/3 at night as I have been doing a lot of reading and apparently some research shows that babies metabolise Zoton quicker than adults so splitting the dose is preferable.
Anyways, we're doing that AND I'm now giving R baby rice before 2 feeds instead of one now because that seems to help too. He's also on Enfamil AR - has been since he was about 10 weeks old. We've been through all the other meds - Gaviscon + Neocate, Zantac, Losec and none of them have helped for more than 2 weeks at a time (the Neocate gave him diarrhea and he found it hard to take it because it's so thin, even with the Gaviscon so we stopped that after half a day!) so really Zoton is more or less the end of the line in meds for him and I'm terrified it will stop working.
For now he's improved a fair bit thankfully but I'm afraid to hope too much.

Thanks again for your help


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