These are the 12 drugs sending the most kids to the emergency room

[neversickanymore]

These are the 12 drugs sending the most kids to the emergency room
By Abby Phillip
September 15

Every year, more than 70,000 kids are taken to the emergency room because they accidentally overdosed on a medication, and most of those kids were less than 2 years old.

Despite efforts to child-proof medication containers for both prescription and over the counter drugs, more young children are being sent to the emergency room because of their parents' prescription drugs every year, according to a new study.

The report, which was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, found some alarming statistics: just 12 types of drugs accounted for more than 75 percent of child hospitalizations and 12 specific medications alone or combined sent 45 percent of kids to the hospital.

Researchers, led by Maribeth Lovegrove, an epidemiologist in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Medication Safety Program, used adverse drug event data from 2007-2011 to look closely at 1,513 cases of emergency room visits of children who had accidentally taken prescription drugs.

They found that three of the 12 substances that sent the most kids to the ER were pain medications, including ingredients in Oxycontin and Vicodin. But several others were for treating chronic conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety, sleeplessness and depression. With some 23 percent of adult Americans suffering from high blood pressure and 10 percent living with diabetes alone, these drugs are likely to be present in a lot of U.S. households.

More needs to be done to improve child safety packaging and educate patients about the risks to their children, the study found.

Here are the 12 medications that are implicated in 45 percent of hospitalizations between 2007 and 2011:

1. Buprenorphine - treats chronic pain

Brand name drug: Subutex

2. Clonidine - treats high blood pressure


Brand name drugs: Catapres and Kapvay

3. Glipizide - treats type II diabetes

Brand name drug: Glucotrol

4. Clonazepam - treats seizures, anxiety

Brand name drug: Klonopin

5. Metoprolol - treats high blood pressure

Brand name drugs: Lopressor® Toprol®¶ Toprol® XL

6. Lorazepam - treats anxiety, depression, insomnia

Brand name drug: Ativan, Lorazepam

7. Lisinopril - treats high blood pressure

Brand name drugs: Prinivil, Zestril

8. Amlodipine - treats high blood pressure

Brand name drugs: Amvaz, Norvasc

9. Bupropion - treats depression, aids smoking cessation

Brand name drugs: Aplenzin, Budeprion, Wellbutrin, Zyban, Componet in the new diet drug Contrave

10. Glyburide - treats type II diabetes

Brand name drugs: DiaBeta, Glynase, PresTab, Micronase

11. Hydrocodone - treats chronic pain

Brand name drugs: Vicodin, Panacet

12. Oxycodone - treats chronic pain

Brand name: Oxycontin, Percocet

** These brand names represent some, not all drugs these substances can be found in.

Continued here http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-sending-the-most-kids-to-the-emergency-room/

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What no marijuana.. I thought with all the hype around MJ and kids it would certainly be number one or at least mentioned.

We need to ban all these medications, think of the children!!!

 

[Screaming_Skull]

Really Bupe? I don't know how the pills are protected in the bottle but those damn strips are freakin' impossible to get open unless u get some sciccors or use your teeth....

 

[cj]

I'd like to know the Median age at admission for each specific drug. I bet the median would be closer to 18 for the recreational drugs and lower for the non rec drugs. Though bupe being number 1 is strange even though the strips and older pills could pass taste wise for very nasty candy.

 

[Freon]

I can't imagine many kids having access to buprenorphine. Sure it might be found in the rare medicine cabinet and some dealers selling it and shit but that still doesn't add up I feel like.

 

[MikeRWK]

So this shows kids are fuckin stupid and mostly take high blood pressure pills.

 

[psood0nym]

I can't imagine many kids having access to buprenorphine. Sure it might be found in the rare medicine cabinet and some dealers selling it and shit but that still doesn't add up I feel like.

From the abstract of the journal article the news article is based on:

Accounting for the number of unique patients who received dispensed prescriptions, the hospitalization rate for unsupervised ingestion of buprenorphine products was significantly higher than rates for all other commonly implicated medications and 97-fold higher than the rate for oxycodone products (200.1 vs 2.1 hospitalizations per 100 000 unique patients).

And:

75.4% [of the total cases] involved 1- or 2-year old children.

This seems to imply that most buprenorphine-related visits don't involve people trying to get high, but rather accessibility to infants and young toddlers that shove random things in their mouths. Since bupe is overwhelmingly prescribed to addicts trying to break their opioid dependence the fact that it's implicated in 97 times more visits than the most commonly abused prescription opioid oxycodone is telling. Perhaps opioid addicts are just THAT much more irresponsible (leaving pills strewn about, bottles open around their kids, etc.) than non-addict users of opioids, but I think a massive factor may be the duration that these medications stay in the home. Since getting off of opioids tends to be a long drawn out process, there may simply be more opportunities to accidentally ingest bupe over that much time compared to opioids typically prescribed for a short period.

 

['medicine cabinet']

Why the hell are there so many non schedule drugs on there? So many bizarre drugs.

 

[panic_the_digital]

^Also the most common drugs in mom/dad/grandma/grandpa's medicine cabinet. Clonidine had me scratching my head for a second, though it is being used more and more for ADHD.

 

[Zerrr]

Why the hell are there so many non schedule drugs on there? So many bizarre drugs.

^Also the most common drugs in mom/dad/grandma/grandpa's medicine cabinet. Clonidine had me scratching my head for a second, though it is being used more and more for ADHD.

75.4% [of the total cases] involved 1- or 2-year old children.

^^^ or

Every year, more than 70,000 kids are taken to the emergency room because they accidentally overdosed on a medication, and most of those kids were less than 2 years old.

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

^That's a striking statistic.

Unless there was concurrent drug use or they ingested grams of the substance the benzo overdoses probably were non-life threatening. But it certainly can put you in a comatose-like state and can't be healthy (i.e. I'm asserting that it's still dangerous and that people shouldn't do it if they value their health).

What I'm most worried about is kids taking their parents' buprenorphine.