Docs setting patients up for a lifetime of pill-popping

The way things are going, pill organizers with cartoon characters on them may well be the hot gift for kids this Christmas.

A new study from the University of Illinois at Chicago has found that “polypharmacy,” which means being prescribed multiple drugs, is no longer just a problem among seniors.

That’s right. Kids — most of whom should have a total pill-popping regime that consists of taking a daily vitamin — are now being handed drugs with the same abandon as their grandparents!

But it’s actually much worse than that.

Because what these researchers also uncovered should be an all-out wake-up call for parents and grandparents everywhere.

Meds prescribed by pediatricians are now emerging as the latest drug-related threat to the health and safety of kids of all ages – and not just when they get sick.

The knee-jerk approach to any problem big or small for a child of any age is far too often for a doc to whip out the Rx pad.

Sound familiar?

Making use of the vast amount of data collected in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the Chicago researchers set out to see what kinds of medications – and how many — kids are being prescribed these days.

What they found was that out of over 23,000 U.S. children, huge numbers are being given multiple meds. Drugs for chronic conditions such as asthma were found to be heavily prescribed, but so were antidepressants and stimulants – such as what’s used to “treat” ADHD.

And don’t think that just because a physician OKs a drug, it’s somehow safe.

Because what’s even more shocking is that they discovered that 1 in 12 kids taking more than one med are in danger of sudden death due to an drug interaction called “QT prolongation,” a deadly heart rhythm.

QT prolongation, in fact, may well be the reason why seemingly healthy people (of all ages) suddenly die without an obvious explanation. But most often, if anyone were to bother to take a closer look, it would become clear that it had been triggered by prescription drug use.

This appears to be just the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg. In fact, there’s so much we don’t know about how Big Pharma’s products interact with each other that it could fill a whole library of books!

And where kids are concerned, that’s doubly true.

Jeanette Trella, who heads up the Poison Control Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, chimed in on the study results, saying that since many medications aren’t well-studied in children, we “sometimes get surprised” by the effects they can have on kids.

Well, that’s certainly the understatement of the year!

But guess what? Even when drugs are studied thoroughly, they’re still a constant source of surprise.

As many patients have learned… or their families have tragically come to find out… taking more than one drug is a bit like playing Russian roulette.

While the so-called “solution” to this problem is to ask your doctor and pharmacist about potential interactions every time you or your child start up on a new drug, the truth of the matter is that they really don’t know!

And if a child you love is taking multiple meds, their life could be in immediate danger.

That’s why, like adults, the only real solution here is to take as few drugs as possible – both Rx and OTC – or preferably, none at all.

“1 in 12 kids taking multiple medications at risk for a major drug interaction: Study” Dr. Ryan Guinness, August 27, 2018, ABC News, abcnews.go.com