The Pet-ticulars of Children Ingesting Drugs Prescribed for Family Pets :

Since March is National Poison Prevention Month, what better time to publish studies on preventable ingestions? We early released a study focused on children who accidentally ingested medications prescribed for the family pet.  Tomasi et al. (10.1542/peds.2016-1496) have compiled a retrospective analysis of poison center calls involving ingestion or exposure of a child to a medication that was designed for a family pet or farm animal.  The data collected from a regional poison control center over 14 years includes information gleaned from 1431 calls involving a veterinary drug exposure in a child under 19 years of age, although just under 90% involved children less than 5 years of age.  Exploratory behaviors were a key reason why children got into these drugs and the vast majority of medications were actually ingested 93% of the time.  Just what types of drugs were ingested and what the outcomes were of those ingestions make for some interesting reading. Fortunately, the vast majority of the time, these ingestions do not result in medical cat-tastrophes for those who ingest them but a few did require referral to an emergency department and fewer still resulted in hospitalizations.  Just when we have done a good job making sure adult and child medications are stored, secured, and safely disposed of when done using, we now need to do our dog-gone best with veterinary medications as well, so that ingestions like those in the article do not come back and bite us or more importantly our young patients.