Preventing Medication Overdoses in Young Children: An Opportunity for Harm Elimination

Medication overdoses in young children are an increasingly common public health problem, but it is a preventable problem that can be addressed by combining strategies. The introduction of child-resistant packaging (CRP), product reformulations, heightened parental awareness, and poison control professionals and systems have made deaths from pediatric poisonings uncommon. However, the morbidity rate from medication overdoses, measured by emergency department (ED) visits and from calls to poison control centers, has been rising.^1,2

Medications have surpassed household products (eg, cleaning agents) as the predominant cause of pediatric poisonings.³ More than 70 000 children are brought to EDs for unintentional medication overdoses annually; the peak incidence is in 2-year-olds (Fig 1). Between 2005 and 2009, ED visits for medication overdoses among children younger than 5 years rose 20%. In 2009, 1 of every 151 2-year-olds was assessed in an ED for a medication overdose. Among children younger than 5 years, 95% of these ED visits for medication overdoses were a result of unsupervised (accidental) ingestions. Fewer than 5% of ED visits were a result of errors made by a caregiver; such visits primarily involve incorrect dosing. Recognizing the significance of this problem, a new Healthy People 2020 objective calls for reversal of these morbidity trends and a reduction in ED visits by 10% by 2020.⁴

Address correspondence to DanielS. Budnitz, MD, MPH, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd, NE, Mail Stop A-24, Atlanta, GA 30333. E-mail: dbudnitz{at}cdc.gov