dose titration
Adjusting a drug dose is like tuning a hot shower: you nudge the tap a little, wait, feel the temperature, and nudge again until it is just right. Dose titration is that careful, stepwise approach to finding the dose that gives the most benefit with the least harm for one particular patient.
In practice titration usually means starting low and going slow — beginning below the expected effective dose and raising it in small increments, allowing time for the drug to reach steady state and for the patient's response and tolerability to be assessed before the next change. It can also mean titrating downward to the lowest effective dose, or tapering to avoid a withdrawal syndrome.
Titration is the clinical method for navigating biological variability and a narrow therapeutic window: because the ideal dose differs from person to person, it is found empirically rather than read from a table. Drugs commonly titrated include warfarin (by INR), antihypertensives, antiepileptics, insulin, and opioids, where overshooting risks serious toxicity.
Levodopa for Parkinson's disease is titrated slowly upward to control symptoms while minimizing nausea and dyskinesia, with the dose individualized over weeks.
Start low, go slow, individualize.
Each titration step should wait long enough for the drug to approach steady state (roughly four to five half-lives); changing dose too soon misreads a still-rising concentration as the final effect.