Researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati gathered information about 544,133 children 5 years of age and younger who had visited the emergency department because they may have been poisoned by medication. The data was gathered from all cases reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers from 2001-2008.
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The authors found that 95 percent of ED visits resulted from self-ingestion. Prescription drugs accounted for 55 percent of the ED visits, 76 percent of hospital admissions, and 71 percent of significant injuries. The biggest impact came from opioid-containing pain medications, sedative hypnotics and cardiovascular medications.
Overall, there was a 22 percent increase in the exposure for this age group, even though the number of children in the U.S. under the age of 5 years increased only 8 percent during the study period.
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