Dennis Quaid's Twins in Medical Nightmare

TMZ has learned that Dennis Quaid's newborn twins are fighting for their lives after being inadvertently overdosed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Sources tell us the twins -- Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace -- were accidentally given a massive dose of Heparin, an anti-coagulant. Babies typically get 10 units. Our sources say they were each mistakenly given 10,000 units. The drug is used to flush out IV lines and prevent blood clots. We're told one dose was given on Sunday morning, another on Sunday evening.

We're told late Sunday night, both babies started to "bleed out." Both babies are now at Cedars in the neo-natal intensive care unit where we're told they are stable. Snip!

I will always remember the professors blunt response:

“You calculated the concentration of that hormone at 10 times thecorrect level. If you had been dealing with a human being and a drug you’d probably have KILLED the patient!”

Those d-arned decimal places REALLY do matter!

You're not kidding... I got into a bit of trouble in an inorganic chemistry class in college, when trying to "hurry" a reaction, I used 10 molar acid, rather than the .1 molar that the professor called for... BIG MISTAKE! Thank goodness for lab hoods. Pyrex will explode.

Mark

I was being sarcastic. In actuality, 10,000 u of heparin from the stock bottle is 2 cc, as it comes in 5,000 units/cc strength. In order to get gown to a 10 unit dose, one must take the stock solution and dilute it with saline, then one can actually get the proper dose in a measurable volume. to get 10 units out of a stock solution, the volume contained just in the needle itself and hub of the needle is too much, as the hub and needle contain approximately .05 cc, which is still 250 units.

If you took (for example) .1 cc of the stock solution (500 units) and placed that in a 9.9 cc vial of saline, then you would have 50 units per cc, from which you could take out .2 cc and administer it as a dose of 10 units. In this case, mistaking .2 of the mix for 2 of the stock solution would indeed give them the results they achieved.

It is all in the dilution. The point i was attmepting to make was that someone was simply not paying attention to what they were doing, and either mixed wrong, or used the stock solution, thinking it was mixed, or simply did not understand that it had to be diluted....not understanding the ramifications of injecting a baby with 10,000 units of an anticoagulant.

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