Say you were giving a 10 day course of antibiotics, 2 pills per day. You are to finish all pills in the bottle.
Say on day 4 you forget your morning dose.
Should you a) take two pills for your evening dose or** b)** take the leftover pill on the 11th day?
Probably neither. Just forget about it.
By and large, the ‘cure’ of any infection that can be treated with oral antibiotics is not going to be compromised by a missed dose. In fact, there is very little data to guide the dose, duration, and route of antibiotics for most infections. Much of what is done is done simply because that’s way it’s done.
For example, it used to be the case that bladder infections in women were treated with a week or two of antibiotics. Now, two day courses are employed.
One other example: standard treatment of kidney infection (pyelonephritis), a much more serious condition than bladder infection, was often with two weeks of antibiotics. This important study not only showed that one week of therapy was just as good as two weeks, but that *oral *treatment in general was perfectly satisfactory (IV antibiotics are often used for kidney infection because, well, because . . .) and that these results held even if the infection had spread to the bloodstream (!) (this last bit is not in the abstract but can be found in the full text). In other words, even for a common infection like pyelonephritis, the “best” or even an “appropriate” antibiotic treatment regimen is far from clear.
IANAD, but if it happened to me, and it has in the past, I would just continue on and not worry about the missed dose. I wouldn’t take two doses to make up for it. You should obviously consult your doctor if you are concerned.
Usually, it will say in the directions, for the majority of drugs not just anti-biotics, that if you miss a dose, you should not double up on doses, just take the next scheduled dose like normal.
You do not want to double your dose at any time.
What you should do is stagger your dosing to get yourself back on your regular schedule.
Example (let’s assume you take your pills at 0900 & 2100):
At 1300 you realize you had forgotten your morning pill. Go ahead and take it, but don’t take your next one until 2300, then 0900 etc.
A simpler alternative is to simply resume your schedule at 2100 and take the last pill on day 11 as described in your OP.
mmm
I would take Karl’s advice (though I doubt it’d be a problem if you take one pill on day 11 to finish out the bottle).
Taking a double dose is very unlikely to help resolve the infection, and could increase chances of side effects.
I skipped a pill a long time ago and called the doctor (at the insistence of my wife), he said take the extra pill at the end. She did it once also and called her doctor who told her to forget it. I don’t tolerate antibiotics well so I’d never take the double dose anyway. As Karl described it’s not clear at all, and the timing and dosage is a general guideline recommended for everyone. This seems to apply to a lot of medications, it doesn’t sound practical to test enough different people on enough different schedules to work out the optimal dosage and schedules to customize it for every individual. As I think about it, it sounds impossible, even if you take into account factors like weight, age, gender, etc. there’s going to be too much variation in individuals to account for, and each infection will have different characteristics also. That doesn’t mean more research shouldn’t be done though. Doctors aren’t overprescribing they way they used to which may be the best improvemt we’ll get.