Drug therapy orphans: the administration of intravenous drugs in hospitalized children

Abstract

Descriptive study, developed at a general university hospital that aimed at verifying the number and types of IV drugs administered to children, the adequacy of their pharmacological presentation for pediatric use and the estimated costs of some drugs administration. In a period of 30 days, 8,245 drug doses were administered, with an average of 274.83 doses a day, and a yearly estimation of 98.940. The most used drugs were methylprednisolone, vancomycin, furosemide, ranitidine, penicillin, amikacin, midazolam, fentanyl, ceftriaxone, cephalothin, oxacillin, ampicillin and metronidazole. None of the 41 different drugs had a pediatric presentation, what caused, in some cases, more manipulation during the preparation, increasing the contamination risks and the loss of stability. Authors observed that the lack of pediatric presentation generated an increase in care costs; as an example, considering the prescription of a child in the period after surgery, with an estimated time of hospitalization of 5 days, the daily therapy costs were of U$6.71, and U$39.52 of drugs were thrown away as they exceeded the children therapeutic needs.