FDA to toddlers: No cold medicine for you!
Categories: Newborns, Babies, Toddlers, Health & safety, Alcohol & drugs
The FDA issued a public health advisory stating children under the age of two should not be given cold or cough medicine without a doctor's order due to serious adverse effects that can occur if given too high a dosage.
My personal advisory to the obviously childless FDA: Maybe you could............... oh, I don't know.........PROVIDE DOSAGE INFORMATION FOR KIDS UNDER TWO ON THE BOTTLE?!
No one wants to call the pediatrician at 2 a.m. just because the baby can't suck his thumb and get settled for sleep because of a stuffy nose. Or because a cough is waking him up.
And there are many households that don't have a doctor to call, what are those parents supposed to do? When it come to an uninsured visit to an E.R. vs. a $5 bottle of cold medicine from Walgreens, I don't think it would take even a government committee long to figure out what the choice will be.
It's upsetting that some young children have gotten overdoses. However, even math geniuses can be stumped by middle-of-the-night story problems like: if a 2-3 year old weighing between 24 and 35 pounds gets 1 teaspoon of Motrin, how much should an 18 pound nine-month old be given and should it be more if they've been crying for two hours straight?
There's a way to fix this: Provide dosages for all weights the drug can be used so we don't have to guess.
Doctors obviously have this information, why can't the rest of us?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
LS 8-17-2007 @ 10:57AM
Next time you go to your doctor, ask him for "the chart". I described this exact problem to my doctor when Little Man was a wee one, and he gave me this awesome chart that included under-2 doses for Acetominaphen (Tylenol), ibuprofen (Advil), and various cold medicines. If I recall, that chart takes you all the way to age 6 or so. It's an invaluable resource that lives in my first-aid kit.
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Amanda 8-17-2007 @ 11:29AM
AMEN sista LS. I have the same one. My pediatrician's office gave me one with a bunch of other flyers and I just threw it away because I didn't look at it to see what it was, the next time I had to call the doc she said, um did you look at the sheet I gave you? I was like OOOOOOOHHHH that's what that was. I now have two, one is taped to my fridge the other on is at grandma's house!
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Jenn 8-17-2007 @ 12:38PM
Hmmm....our pediatrician told us that we should never use any of the OTC cold medications with our child, until she is over the age of two.
We use infant's ibuprofen and infant's tylenol, which do have the dosage for babies on the bottle.
But other than that, when she has a cold, we just spend a lot of time with a humidifier, and sleeping upright on mommy's chest.
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Ethel 8-17-2007 @ 12:42PM
Sigh, dosage is weight dependent and not how long they have been crying. If you took algebra, this is the real life when you use it!
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Heather 8-17-2007 @ 12:43PM
There are links on askdrsears.com for dosage amounts for various weights. :) That site has saved my hiney quite a few times!
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bremarie03 8-17-2007 @ 1:45PM
This is where your local 24 hour pharmacy is invaluable. A wealth of oft-overlooked advice and information, all free for the asking.
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SKL 8-18-2007 @ 8:19AM
I would prefer not to use cough and cold medicines. I don't use them on myself either, unless I have much more than a cough or cold. I normally would not medicate except for a fever or diagnosed infection. But to each his own, I guess.
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Murray_Crew 8-18-2007 @ 11:44PM
Great site, thanks for the information!
Murray Quads
www.murraycrew.blogspot.com
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M4Mommy 8-20-2007 @ 9:18AM
how much to give them? Enough that they stop crying, coughing sneezing and go to sleep. Again, basic algebra.. but then again how many parents these days passed basic math
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motherhawk 10-13-2007 @ 2:03PM
I'm very afraid that parents will now simply give their infants some cold/cough medicine designed for 2-6 yr olds (or for adults if those are withdrawn, too) and just use their own estimates of dosages. Many parents will think it's unfair for their infants to be miserable when everyone else gets to have some cold/cough relief and they will do the best they can with the medicines available for older age groups. Seems safer to let them have the infant-designed medicines. Has anyone considered human nature with this recall? When you leave out information like infant dosages and you take away practical tools that allow baby and parent to sleep, and baby to breathe (they can't breathe through the mouth like older folks can) parents will "make do" with their own more error-prone ways of coping.
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