Abstract
We carried out a medication questionnaire survey in the Pediatric Surgery Ward of our hospital to investigate how caregivers were giving powdered drugs to their children and drug history questionnaire survey to investigate adverse reactions and allergies. The subjects were 269 children aged 0-10 years. We found that 72% of the 42 children aged less than 1 year were given the powder dissolved in drinking water. As for the 51 children aged 1 year, 33 % were given the powder dissolved in water and 19 % took the powder mixed with yogurt or ice cream. For most of the 144 children aged 2-6 years, the powder was given alone (44%) or dissolved in water (42%), whereas 91 % of the 32 children aged 7 years or over took the powder alone. However, though such a large number of caregivers dissolved drug powders in drinking water before giving them to their children, only 37 % of them knew that some powdered drug preparations should not be dissolved in water. Thirty-six children were unwilling to take powders, but compliance improved in 14 of them (39%) through advice given in this respect. The drug history questionnaire showed that 3 of 4 children with a milk allergy had been given a prescription for MEIAKUTO® granules. We requested their physicians to change the prescription to avoid any risks. It also revealed that 20 children had brought drugs into hospital with them, some of them antibiotics, which enabled the double administration of antibiotics to be avoided. The results of our surveys suggest that it is important to advise caregivers regarding the correct method of administration and that checks should be made for histories of side effects and allergies as well as medicines brought into hospital in order to avoid adverse drug reactions.
