Phenobarb absorbtion rate?

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Dale Atkin - 17 Feb 2008 05:40 GMT

The incident tonight with Erwin and the chocolate had me wondering, how long
does it take phenobarb (on average) to get out of the digestive tract. The
possibility of inducing vomiting occured to me, but of course if its too
soon post pill, he'd be upchucking the phenobarb along with whatever I'm
trying to get him to vomit (in this case chocolate), and that obviously
wouldn't be a good thing (especially when the actual danger of the chocolate
being in his system has been assessed to be fairly low).

I've tried a literature search on this, but so far the results have been
less than consistent.

Thoughts?

Dale

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Deborah, DVM - 17 Feb 2008 15:11 GMT

> The incident tonight with Erwin and the chocolate had me wondering, how
> long does it take phenobarb (on average) to get out of the digestive
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
> Dale

According to Plumb's Drug Handbook -- phenobarbitol is slowly absorbed from
the GI tract -- peak levels occur in the dog 4-8 hours after oral dosing.
The plasma half life is 2 days in dogs.

Regarding the chocolate, I doubt they'd interact but I also doubt you could
find any studies to support that!

Deborah, DVM

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Dale Atkin - 17 Feb 2008 15:54 GMT

> According to Plumb's Drug Handbook -- phenobarbitol is slowly absorbed
> from the GI tract -- peak levels occur in the dog 4-8 hours after oral
> dosing. The plasma half life is 2 days in dogs.

Just the information I was looking for. Thanks :).

Now, just cuz I'm a bit of a geek and I'd like to make my excel sheet as
complete as possible, would you think a linear absorbtion would be most
accurate? (for my own interest, I'm modeling expected concentration as a
function of time)

> Regarding the chocolate, I doubt they'd interact but I also doubt you
> could find any studies to support that!

Been reading too many cautionary pages lately. Now that I've had some more
time to reflect, it makes sense that they wouldn't interact. The guy on the
other end of the phone though didn't really instill me with confidence (well
thats not entirely true, he gave me enough confidence to ride it out, but I
was watching him very closely for the next few hours).

Its weird though, chocolate has always impacted him strangely. He has a
tendency to get really tired, and basically sleep it off. I know this isn't
particularly normal (at least from what I've been told). Sometimes he'll get
a touch of diarhea the next morning (or more likely at 3am :) ), but thats
it (so far nothing this morning).

Dale

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Rocky - 18 Feb 2008 03:31 GMT

"Dale Atkin" <labrador1@ibycus.com> said in
alt.med.veterinary:

> The incident tonight with Erwin and the chocolate had me
> wondering, how long does it take phenobarb (on average) to
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> when the actual danger of the chocolate being in his system
> has been assessed to be fairly low).

In the short term, it doesn't matter. A one-time double dose of
PB will probably have fewer side-effects than no dose at all.

I have no idea how the chocolate/theobromine would factor in.

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--Matt. Rocky's a Dog.

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Pet Forum / Miscellaneous / Animal Health / February 2008

Phenobarb absorbtion rate?