Nearly six in 10 children who take medicine for an out-of-hospital emergency are given the incorrect dosage, according to a study published July 10 in Pediatrics.
The researchers collected prehospital records for pediatric patients from 2020 and 2021 and analyzed all cases that encountered emergency medical services and received at least one nonnebulized drug.
They evaluated the use of 10 medications: lorazepam, diazepam, midazolam, fentanyl, hydromorphone, morphine, ketorolac, epinephrine, diphenhydramine and methylprednisolone. When comparing about 64,000 patients files, the researchers found 42.6 out of 100 did not deviate from recommended weight-based doses and clinical guidelines
About 57 percent of the time, the given dose was equal to or more than 20 percent of the weight-appropriate dose from national guidelines, according to the study.