Children's Poisoning From Medication On The Rise

The number of young children admitted to hospitals or rushed to emergency rooms because they unintentionally took a potentially toxic dose of prescription medication has risen dramatically in recent years.

The rise in exposure to prescription products has been so striking that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established the PROTECT Initiative, intended to prevent unintended medication overdoses in children.

Randall Bond, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Cincinnati Children's Medical Center, has completed a study that documents this disturbing trend. The study is be published online in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Problem getting worse

"The problem of pediatric medication poisoning is getting worse, not better," Bond said. "More children are exposed, more are seen in emergency departments, more are admitted to hospitals, and more are harmed each year."

Bond found that exposure to prescription products accounted for most of the emergency visits (55 percent), admissions (76 percent) and significant harm (71 percent). Levels of ingestion of opioids, most often prescribed to treat pain; sedatives-hypnotics, frequently prescribed as sleep aids; and cardiovascular medications were particularly high.

"Prevention efforts at home have been insufficient," Bond said. "We need to improve storage devices and child-resistant closures and perhaps require mechanical barriers, such as blister packs. Our efforts can't ignore society's problem with opioid and sedative abuse or misuse."

Children find unsecured medicine

In Bond's study, the largest part of increasing admissions, injuries and death was due to children finding and ingesting medication on their own. Therapeutic errors at home were uncommon and increased only minimally.

The most likely explanation for these trends is a rise in the number of medications around small children, he said. A 1998-99 survey found that half of adults had taken at least one prescription medication in the preceding week and seven percent had taken five or more. In 2006, the same surveyors found that 55 percent had taken at least one prescription medication in the preceding week and 11 percent had taken five or more.