New research presented at the AAP National Conference & Exhibition reveals that many parents of children who require allergy treatment often don’t administer epinephrine.
The researchers said most parents (78.5%) reported that autoinjectors were not used during their child’s allergic reactions.
The most common reason for not using epinephrine was that the reaction did not seem severe enough to warrant epinephrine use (40.3%).
Other reasons included that it was their child’s first allergic reaction and no epinephrine was prescribed at the time.
18.5% of parents reported being too scared or emotional to administer an epinephrine autoinjector at the time.
“Underuse of epinephrine to treat severe allergic reactions continues to be an important area to address with patients and their families,”
Julie Wang, MD, professor of pediatrics in the division of allergy and immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai says “Identifying barriers to treating severe allergic reactions will allow targeted education, interventions to optimize management of allergic reactions or both.”
Speak Your Mind