MONDAY, May 8, 2006 (HealthDay News) -- An online "infusion calculator" and a computerized ordering system for chemotherapy and other types of intravenous drug infusions greatly reduce the risk of medication errors in children, researchers say.
In children, drug dosing is based on calculations that factor in the child's age, height, and weight. Miscalculations and rounding errors can have potentially deadly consequences. Compared to adults, children have a lower tolerance for medication overdose, because their still-developing bodies absorb, metabolize, and excrete drugs at different rates than adults. Children undergoing chemotherapy are at even greater risk, due to the combination of potent chemicals and dosing challenges.
"Our findings reveal that using a Web-based calculator makes it less likely to order and give the child the wrong dose or commit other errors, such as omitting patient information, weight parameters or infusion rates," researcher Dr. Christoph Lehmann, director of clinical information technology at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, Baltimore, said in a prepared statement.
"Our calculator stops ordering errors before they can even reach the pharmacy, let alone the patient," Lehmann said.
The calculator computes all doses, advises and warns doctors of drug interactions, and automatically offers "default" doses and drug dilutions to prevent overdosing and under-dosing of patients.
Lehmann and his colleagues compared handwritten and calculator-generated orders and found that handwritten orders had an error rate of 45 errors per every 100 written orders, compared with 6 per 100 for calculator-generated orders.
A computerized drug-ordering system also helped prevent medication errors, researchers said.
The findings appear in the May 8 issue of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine.
The online infusion calculator and computerized ordering system were developed under the leadership of Lehmann and have been in use at the Children's Center for about three years.
More information
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices has more about preventing drug errors in children.
