Children’s ED visits for adverse drug events can largely be attributed to antibiotics: new study

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that antibiotics were behind over half of all emergency department visits for adverse drug events for kids under four. Published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, this study looked at ED visits between 2019 through 2023. According to analysis of the data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance and corresponding U.S. Census Bureau Estimates, an estimated 47,628 ED visits annually can be attributed to antibiotics in kids. Overall, antibiotic-related adverse drug events represented 37% of all visits to the ED. For children under the age of two, antibiotics were implicated in 53.7% of ED visits for adverse drug reactions. For children between ages three and four, they were responsible for 54.3% of visits to the ED. For children between the ages 10 and 19, antibiotics were implicated in just 21.4% of these visits.Most of these visits for antibiotic-related drug effects involved allergies—a whopping 86.6%. Meanwhile, just 3.3% of these visits resulted in hospitalization. Oral antibiotics, specifically penicillins, accounted for almost all (98.8%) of incidents. The authors note the amount of annual ED visits for adverse drug events from 2019 to 2023 was lower than 2011 to 2015, likely having to do with the COVID-19 pandemic which saw lower ED visits overall and less antibiotic prescribing in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, the estimated number of ED visits for antibiotic-related events for kids climbed to 73,095. “Although overall antibiotic prescribing has decreased in recent years in the USA, especially among children, there remain continued opportunities for reducing harms,” the authors wrote. Dr. Ganga Moorthy of the Duke School of Medicine and Dr. Matthew Kronman of the University of Washington say in an accompanying editorial that these estimates provide useful benchmarks for considering the risks and benefits of antibiotics. “If the risk of an ADE outweighs the likelihood of the possible complication, watch-and-wait approaches for children without a clear diagnosis of a bacterial infection are prudent, and conversations with families should routinely include the risks associated with antibiotics as part of the shared decision-making process,” they wrote.

Children’s ED visits for adverse drug events can largely be attributed to antibiotics: new study

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