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Pharmacy & Pharmacology vocabulary · Pharmacokinetics

Clearance

Meaning in pharmacy & pharmacology, with examples

/ˈklɪrəns/nounAdvanced term

In pharmacy & pharmacology, clearance means: The volume of blood plasma from which a drug is completely removed per unit of time, usually given in millilitres per minute or litres per hour.

In Turkish: klirens

How it is used

A key PK parameter: together with the volume of distribution it determines half-life. Pharmacists often use creatinine clearance (CrCl), estimated with the Cockcroft-Gault equation, when checking doses of drugs removed by the kidneys. A drug can be 'cleared by the kidneys' or show 'reduced clearance'.

Example sentences

  1. His creatinine clearance is 25 mL/min, so we need to check whether the dose should be reduced.

  2. Renal clearance falls with age, so some drugs stay in the body longer.

Common collocations

  • creatinine clearance
  • renal clearance
  • reduced clearance
  • total body clearance
  • eliminationThe removal of a drug from the body through metabolism and excretion, mainly by the kidneys into urine and by the liver into bile.
  • half-lifeThe time it takes for the amount or concentration of a drug in the blood to fall to half of its starting level.
  • pharmacokineticsThe study of what the body does to a drug: how it is absorbed, distributed, metabolised and eliminated, and how its level in the blood changes over time.
  • steady stateThe point during regular dosing when the amount of drug entering the body equals the amount being removed, so blood levels stay within a stable range.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Pharmacokinetics

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