Here's the bottom line reason pediatricians love the decision to ban cough medicines: fewer 2 AM phone calls from parents about dosing, less anxiety about lawsuits...
Benjamin Brewer MD who blogs for the WSJ on medicine:
The dose provided some relief — the boy’s sniffles and cough abated long enough for the Brewers to get some shuteye. “I have found that the advice to hold off on a kid’s cold medicine is much easier to give than it is to heed,†Brewer writes.
The crackdown on cold medicines for kids may have an unintended benefit for the doctor. “With infant cold medications off the market, I won’t miss the parents calling in the middle of the night for recommendations on how much to use,†he writes. “I won’t miss meticulously documenting how many tenths of a milliliter I advised a person to give or the liability risks associated with my advice.â€
Thanks for the dose of honesty doc.
I just wish the FDA experts were as freaked out about MRSA and diminishing antibiotics to treat them as they were about cough medicines. Ironically, the "safety uber alles" movement has made it likely kids will see fewer antibiotics for killer bugs or coughs. Reminds me of when I was a kid. It would make me feel a little bit better if Mickey Mantle were still batting clean up for the Yankees.
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/10/23/a-taste-of-his-own-medicine/
For those who want to see Mantle's stats as opposed to the number of kids who died from infectious diseases in the 1960s...
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/mantlmi01.shtml
Benjamin Brewer MD who blogs for the WSJ on medicine:
The dose provided some relief — the boy’s sniffles and cough abated long enough for the Brewers to get some shuteye. “I have found that the advice to hold off on a kid’s cold medicine is much easier to give than it is to heed,†Brewer writes.
The crackdown on cold medicines for kids may have an unintended benefit for the doctor. “With infant cold medications off the market, I won’t miss the parents calling in the middle of the night for recommendations on how much to use,†he writes. “I won’t miss meticulously documenting how many tenths of a milliliter I advised a person to give or the liability risks associated with my advice.â€
Thanks for the dose of honesty doc.
I just wish the FDA experts were as freaked out about MRSA and diminishing antibiotics to treat them as they were about cough medicines. Ironically, the "safety uber alles" movement has made it likely kids will see fewer antibiotics for killer bugs or coughs. Reminds me of when I was a kid. It would make me feel a little bit better if Mickey Mantle were still batting clean up for the Yankees.
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/10/23/a-taste-of-his-own-medicine/
For those who want to see Mantle's stats as opposed to the number of kids who died from infectious diseases in the 1960s...
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/mantlmi01.shtml
