New data shows that more than half a million American children each year are treated for medication side effects in outpatient clinics and emergency rooms.
Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston looked at National Center for Health Statistics outpatient data between 1995 and 2005. Among children up to age 18, there were 585,922 visits a year for adverse drug events (ADEs). Most visits were to outpatient clinics, but 22 percent were to hospital emergency departments.
“We found that there are as many as 13 outpatient visits for adverse drug events per 1,000 children, indicating that they are a common complication of pediatric care,” study leader Dr. Florence Bourgeois said.
The majority of visits were by children four and younger (43 percent), followed by youngsters aged 15 to 18. Skin-related and gastrointestinal were the most common types of side effects, and 52 percent of the children had symptoms that suggested an allergic reaction.
The most frequently implicated medicines? Antimicrobials like penicillin. They were involved in 27.5 percent of all visits and in as many as 40 percent of visits by children under four.
The two next most frequently implicated drugs were neurologic/psychotropic medications (6.5 percent) and hormones (6 percent). These two categories of drugs accounted for the most visits among older children, which likely reflects their increased use for emotional and behavioral disorders by teens and for birth control among teen girls.
The findings suggest that doctors need to be aware of the potential adverse effects of medications in children and provide appropriate information to parents, the researchers said.
“One approach to reducing adverse events is to ensure that clinicians have ready access to complete information on the adverse effects and comparative effectiveness of medications. This information should derive from data on the real-world use of the drugs, not just from the package inserts,” Bourgeois said.
The study appeared in Pediatrics.
