Using a spoon to measure medicine for children can lead to potentially dangerous dosing mistakes, a study claims.
Instead, parents are encouraged to use droppers and syringes which measure in millilitres when giving liquid medicines.
In the most recent test parents who used spoonfuls ‘were 50 per cent more likely to give their children incorrect doses than those who measured in more precise millilitre units’.
More harm than good? Parents who used spoonfuls 'were 50 per cent more likely to give their children incorrect doses, a study found
Incorrect doses included giving too much and too little, which can both be dangerous said Dr Alan Mendelsohn, the report’s co-author and associate professor at New York University’s medical school. He explained underdosing may not adequately treat an illness and can lead to medication-resistant infections, while overdoses may cause illness or side effects that can be life-threatening.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, involved nearly 300 parents with children under nine.
They were treated for various illnesses at two New York City emergency rooms and sent home with prescriptions for liquid medicines, mostly antibiotics.
Parents were contacted afterwards by telephone and asked how they had measured the prescribed doses.
Safer: Droppers and syringes that measure in milliliters should be used for liquid medicines, say doctors
They also brought their measuring devices to the researchers’ offices to demonstrate doses they’d given their children.
Almost a third of the parents involved gave the wrong dose and one in six used a kitchen spoon rather than a device such as an oral syringe or dropper, that lists doses in millilitres. Less than half the prescriptions specified doses in millilitres. But even when they did, the medicine bottle label often listed doses in teaspoons.
Parents often assume that means any similar-sized kitchen spoon, the report said, and they fail to use a precise teaspoon measure. The study found 43 per cent of parents who measured out the medicine using some sort of spoon had made a mistake, compared to only 28 per cent of those measuring the medication in precise millilitres.
And 45 percent of parents using teaspoon or tablespoon measurements made an error despite knowing what the correctly prescribed dose was supposed to be, compared to 31 percent of parents using millilitres to measure medication.
Dr Mendelsohn suggested pharmacists and other health professionals should be enlisted to promote the consistent use of millilitre units on prescriptions and labels on medicine bottles.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2690759/Spoonfuls-lead-medicine-errors-study-finds.html#ixzz37UlRRxeI
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