Pediatric Overmedication Can Occur With Multiple Cold Medications
My question on this topic would be, why are children being given so many medications? Letting a cold in a child run its natural course is a healthy and safe practice. The child needs this chance for his or her body to learn to fight off infections. The symptoms of a cold are NOT symptoms…they are mechanisms that the body uses to defeat invaders.
(article) Pediatricians at the recent annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have voiced an added concern this cold season: they fear that parents may not appreciate how easy it is to give a child an overdose of cold medication. “It is essential that parents read the label of an over-the-counter cold medication carefully before selecting a medicine for their child because the risk to children from the misuse of cold medications is still widely underestimated,” said James Kaltenback, MD, of South Jersey Pediatric Associates, a division of Children’s Health Associates.The pediatricians’ chief concern is that children may be getting an overdose of fever reducers, which can affect the liver or the kidney. Some children’s cough and cold medications contain a fever reducer, such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen. But often, parents who are unaware of these ingredients may give their children an addition! al fever-reducing medication. For this reason, 64% of the surveyed pediatricians believe it is very important that children’s cold medications do not contain fever reducers.Pediatricians are urged to alert parents to the potential dangers of over-the-counter cold medications. One example is the over-the-counter fever reducer acetaminophen, found in some children’s cold medicines such as Tylenol, Dimetapp, and Triaminic. Acetaminophen became the preferred fever reducer in the 1970s after studies showed a link between aspirin and Reye’s syndrome, a potentially fatal disease in children and teens. Recent studies indicate that too much acetaminophen could adversely affect a child’s health.