Toddlers' Hospitalizations For Opioid Poisoning Tripled Over 15 Years

By Ike Swetlitz Easy access to opioids has harmed even society's youngest members: The number of children and teenagers hospitalized for painkiller poisoning has doubled in recent decades, according to a study published Monday. Why it matters: This is the first study to look at national hospitalization rates among children and adolescents for opioid poisonings. "I'm really happy to see that the authors have looked at the potential consequences of prescription opioid availability for adolescents and children," said Robert Bossarte, director of the West Virginia University Injury Control Research Center. "There's been so much focus on the prescription opioid epidemic among adults, and the overdose rate among adults." There are a few reasons for that focus, researchers said. A larger number of adults have been dying from opioid overdoses than children have, so they attract more media attention. And adults are usually the ones getting the pills from the pharmacies, so policies targeted at preventing the illicit spread of opioids focus more on adults. The nitty gritty: Researchers examined a database of hospitalization data on children, aptly named KID -- Kids' Inpatient Database -- that now covers 44 different states. Using ICD-9 codes, which describe the reason the patient is in the hospital, researchers were able to identify the number of opioid poisonings. They split the data up into age groups and calculated how the hospitalization rates changed over time. The study f...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news