Lidocaine therapy with an exponentially declining infusion. Clinical evaluation of an optimized dosing technique.

A novel technique to achieve rapidly and continually maintain therapeutic lidocaine concentrations was designed according to known pharmacokinetic properties of the drug and was tested in 12 patients who required immediate lidocaine prophylaxis because of suspected acute myocardial infarction. The serum lidocaine concentrations achieved by this method remained within the therapeutic range (1.2 to 5.0 mg/L) in 83 of 84 determinations and showed …