Question

Scenario Mr. Larsen returns home, and starts to come down with a cough. He would like to take Mucinex Cold & Flu syrup. which contains acetaminophen 650 mg / guaifenesin 400 mg phenylephrine HCl 10 mg per 20 mL dose. Question Assume that Mr. Larsen takes two 20 ml doses of Mucinex per day. How many mg of acetaminophen will he have ingested from the Mucinex?

Answer 1

SCENARIO 1:

Mucinex syrup contains 650mg of Acetaminophen per 20ml Dose.

Now, Mr. Larsen takes 2 doses of 20ml syrup, which means the following;

2 X 650mg = 1300mg

Hence, Mr. Larsen has ingested a total of 1300mg of Acetaminophen from Mucinex syrup.

SCENARIO 2:

Since Mr. Larsen has already taken 1300mg of Acetaminophen from the syrup already. Then he can only take a single tablet of 500mg since we are assuming that he will only take a single tablet which will then equals to a total of 1800mg, thus not exceeding the limit of 2g/day.

Thus, Mr. Larsen can only take 1 tablet (500mg) of acetaminophen.