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OTC Cold Medicines Sending Children to Emergency Rooms
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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 While experts have suggested that intentional or unintentional poisonings may be responsible for many ALTEs in children, the topic has not been systematically studied.
Here, Pitetti and his colleagues performed comprehensive urine toxicology screens on 274 children under two years of age who arrived at the emergency room of a large children's hospital with symptoms of an ALTE.
Thirteen children or 4.7 percent of the results were positive for an over-the-counter cold preparation, the team found. However, not one parent in these cases admitted to having given such a preparation to their child.
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Pitetti speculated that parents were embarrassed to admit they had given their children these medicines, or perhaps the child ingested the preparation through breast-feeding. Or the parent could have intended to cause harm to the infant, he said.
More information
There's more on recommendations against the use of cold medicines in small children at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
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Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 8/4/2008
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SOURCES: Raymond Pitetti, M.D., associate medical director, emergency department, Children's Hospital, Pittsburgh; G. Randall Bond, M.D., medical director, Cincinnati Drug and Poison Information Center, Cincinnati Children's Hospital; August 2008, Pediatrics
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