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June 11, 2022Inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions tied to avoidable adverse events and expenditures in children
Healio reports, “Researchers found that inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions were associated with avoidable adverse drug events in children, including Clostridioides difficile, and substantial health care expenditures.”
For the study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers “focused on a cohort of 2,804,245 children with commercial insurance between the ages of 4 and 12 years who had one of eight common infections,” and “found that 31% to 36% of the cohort received inappropriate antibiotics for bacterial infections, whereas [up] to 70% received inappropriate antibiotics for viral infections.”
The study was conducted by the Antibiotic Resistance Project at The Pew Charitable Trusts and reported an association between inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions, avoidable adverse drug events, and high health care expenditures in pediatric patients.
“We typically tend to focus our conversations and discussions around the consequences of inappropriate antibiotic use, around the concerns [about] the emergence of antibiotic resistance and how we could accelerate it,” one of the researchers said. “But the study really kind of zeroes in on the impact that inappropriate prescribing can have at the individual patient level, especially when we’re talking about adverse events and side effects that can be associated with what we’re potentially unnecessarily exposing children to.”
The bottom line parents is that you need need to let your child’s health professional know that if an antibiotic is not needed you’re absolutely okay with symptomatic care. Also, if your child’s health professional says an antibiotic is not needed, don’t push them for one. There are just too many risks with unnecessary or inappropriate antibiotics.
Read more at Healio.
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