Clearance

Nick Holford; Dong-Seok Yim

doi:10.12793/tcp.2015.23.2.42

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Holford and Yim: Clearance

Original Article

Translational and Clinical Pharmacology 2015;23(2):42-45.

Published online: 15 December 2015

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12793/tcp.2015.23.2.42

Clearance

Nick Holford^1,^∗, Dong-Seok Yim^2,³

¹Department of Pharmacology & Clinical Pharmacology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

²Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, Seoul 06591, Korea

³PIPET (Pharmacometrics Institute for Practical Education and Training), College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Korea

^∗Correspondence: Nick Holford; Tel: +64-9-923-6730, E-mail: n.holford@auckland.ac.nz

Received 21 September 2015 Accepted 4 October 2015

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This tutorial deals with basic concepts of clearance, the most important parameter in pharmacokinetics but often challenging for students in clinical pharmacology. Its relationships with dose, concentration and elimination rate are discussed using a physical model and examples of commonly used drugs, as well as its physiological aspects pertaining to the blood flow to differing organs. Finally, application of clearance to the calculation of maintenance dose rate and half-life is used to show how it is essential in pharmacotherapy and clinical pharmacology.

Keywords: clearance, pharmacokinetics, clinical pharmacology

References

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Figure 1.

The definition of clearance

Figure 2.

The bathtub model for clearance.

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