Estimation of actual total weight for anesthetized patients by use of head weight

(Received 30 August , 2009 ; Accepted 9 November , 2009)AbstractBackground and purpose: Weight-based dosing of medication is used in the emergency and anesthesia departments. Ideally each patient should be weighed prior to dosing.However, this may not always occur, especially in the anesthesia department. The purpose of this study was to assess the prediction formula for actual patient weight by the sum of head weight and estimated Anesthetic personnel.Materials and methods: Diagnostic descriptive study was used for patient’s body weight, which had been estimated by anesthetic personnel's, while head patient weight was measured by instrument during anesthesia. Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and regression linear and compared with ANOVA test. The significance level in this study was.Results: The mean total weight of patients that were estimated by the personnel of anesthesia was 65.7±11.7 kg. The mean actual weight was 65.2 ± 13.7 kg. The correlation coefficient between estimated actual weight is not significant.Conclusion: This study showed that adding head weight to the estimation weight by anesthetic personnel, results in a more accurate weight estimation than head Wight alone.J Mazand Univ Med Sci 2009; 19(72): 45-51 (Persian).