Pharmacology
Diagnostic and therapeutic agents, dosages, contraindications, and adverse reactions at technician depth.
Concentration, Dose and Delivery: The Arithmetic Behind Every Drop
At the assistant level, ophthalmic pharmacology is a matter of knowing which bottle does what. At the technician level you are expected to know how much drug is in the bottle, how much of it actually reaches the eye, and what your instillation technique does to both numbers. Almost every quantitative pharmacology question on the exam reduces to one of three conversions.
Percentage strength. A percentage on an ophthalmic label means grams of drug per 100 mL of solution. The anchor worth memorizing is that 1% equals 10 mg/mL; everything else scales from there. Multiply mg/mL by the volume of a drop to get the dose actually delivered.
In the full COT guide
- Concentration, Dose and Delivery: The Arithmetic Behind Every Drop
- Diagnostic Agents: Timing, Storage, and the Interactions That Ruin a Test
- Therapeutic Classes, Adverse Effects, and What the Technician Escalates
Try COT free for 7 days
Everything in COA plus the full COT bank across all 19 official content areas and the COT exam simulation.
Start my free trialNo charge for 7 days. Then $19.99/month, or $179/year if you choose annual billing. Cancel anytime.