Tapering off Steroids

[Jimbo1968]

My mum has been given a 7 day 40mg daily dose of prednisolone . What would the correct tape off regime be. Stopping from full dose doesn’t seem a good idea which is what my mums GP has prescribed, I wanted to talk to her about slowly reducing but wanted to know what is right before arguing my point . Many thanks

[tex]

I'm not a doctor, but to the best of my knowledge, as long as a prednisone treatment only lasts less than three weeks, it's not necessary to taper the dose when ending the treatment. That said, some practitioners are so concerned about the risk of adverse effects, that they recommend tapering the dose if the treatment lasts five days or longer, and a few are so cautious that they taper the dose if the treatment lasts as little as three days.

For a seven day treatment at a relatively moderate dose such as that, most patients should not suffer any adverse consequences when they end the treatment without a taper. But as I said, I'm not a doctor.

If I chose to taper a treatment such as that, anyway, I would take the full dose for about three days, then begin to reduce the dose by about 5 mg per day, and when I got down to 10 mg or so, I would reduce the taper to 2 1/2 mg per day rather than five.

I hope this helps,

Tex

[Jimbo1968]

Thank you Tex that was very helpful and informative. Much appreciated