Original articleNational Surveillance of Emergency Department Visits for Outpatient Adverse Drug Events in Children and Adolescents
Section snippets
Methods
We conducted active surveillance through the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System–Cooperative Adverse Event Surveillance project (NEISS-CADES), a national stratified probability sample of 63 hospitals in the United States and its territories with a minimum of 6 beds and either a 24-hour adult or pediatric ED.12 All the hospitals treat pediatric or adolescent patients; five of the hospitals (7.9%) are exlusively pediatric hospitals. NEISS-CADES is a joint effort of the Centers for
National Estimates
Annually, an estimated 158,520 patients ≤18 years of age (95% CI, 117,745-199,295; 6681 cases) were treated in EDs for ADEs in 2004 and 2005. The population rate of ADEs in patients ≤18 years old was 2 per 1000 persons (95% CI, 1.5-2.6 per 1000 persons). Almost half (49.4%) of these ADEs occurred in patients between 1 and 4 years of age, and 12.4% of these ADEs occurred in infants <1 year old (Table I). The rate of ADEs in children <5 years of age was >4 times higher than the rate in children
Discussion
ADEs pose a significant pediatric health burden in the United States. Compared with estimates of other injuries, we found that in 2004 and 2005 ADEs were the third leading cause of nonfatal injuries treated in hospital EDs in infants <1 year of age and the sixth leading cause of nonfatal injuries in children 1 to 4 years old.19 One third of the estimated 158,520 pediatric ADEs were unintentional overdoses in toddlers, most commonly from analgesic and respiratory medications. More than one third
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