Medications for Children Receiving Intensive Care: A National Sample
Objective:
To examine medication administration records through electronic health record data to provide a broad description of the pharmaceutical exposure of critically ill children.
Design:
Retrospective cohort study using the Cerner Health Facts database.
Setting:
United States.
Patients:
A total of 43,374 children 7 days old to less than 22 years old receiving intensive care with available pharmacy data.
Interventions:
None.
Measurements and Main Results:
A total of 907,440 courses of 1,080 unique medications were prescribed with a median of nine medications (range, 1–99; 25–75th percentile, 5–16) per patient. The most common medications were acetaminophen, ondansetron, and morphine. Only 45 medications (4.2%) were prescribed to more than 5% of patients, and these accounted for 442,067 (48.7%) of the total courses of medications. Each additional medication was associated with increased univariate risk of mortality (odds ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.05–1.06; p
Source: Pediatric Critical Care Medicine - Category: Pediatrics Tags: Online Clinical Investigations Source Type: research
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