In Mosteller's approach, the calculated BSA is multiplied by which maintenance fluid amount per day?

• A. 1000 mL per day
• B. 1500 mL per day
• C. 2000 mL per day
• D. 500 mL per day

Answer: (B)

In this approach, maintenance fluids are scaled to body size by multiplying body surface area by a fixed daily maintenance amount. After computing BSA with the Mosteller formula (height in cm times weight in kg, square root, divided by 3600), you multiply that BSA by 1500 mL per day. This fixed 1500 mL/day represents the baseline maintenance fluid that scales with how large someone is—the bigger the person (larger BSA), the higher the total daily maintenance fluid. The other numbers are not used in this method because they don’t account for size-related scaling in the same way. So the maintenance fluid amount per day to multiply by is 1500 mL.