Younger kids more likely to get wrong dose

BALTIMORE, July 9 (UPI) -- Infants and young children treated with heart drugs get the wrong dose or are victims of errors more often than older children, U.S. researchers found.

Research led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center found the highest number of errors among infants under age 1.

Lead investigator Dr. Marlene Miller said children of all ages are vulnerable to such mistakes because healthcare providers can manually miscalculate weight-sensitive doses and can misinterpret safe age ranges of adult drugs used off-label in children.

"We found that cardiac medication errors happen in children, and they can happen every step of the way, from prescribing to delivering the medication, but dosing and administration errors were ominously common," Miller said in a statement.

The researchers emphasize that 96 percent of the errors found in the studies were benign and caused no detectable harm to patients or never reached the patients. However, in 4 percent of the cases there was harm, although no deaths were reported, the researchers said.

The findings were published in Pediatrics.