At-home care of kids with leukemia prone to errors

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – When children with acute
lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are cared for at home, medication
errors occur in about one in five cases, according to a new
study. Although the errors encountered in the study were mostly
trivial, some could reduce treatment efficacy or increase the
side effects of treatment.

Most information about medication errors comes from
hospital settings, Dr. James A. Taylor and his team note in
their report in the journal Cancer. They propose that mistakes
may be even more common when medications are administered by
parents to their children.

The research team investigated this possibility at the
Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle over
a 2-month period in 2005. The subjects were 69 children
undergoing treatment for a first bout with leukemia, and their
caregivers.

The investigators asked the caregivers to describe and
demonstrate how medications were being given, and to tell when,
how often and for how long each drug was used.

Overall, 172 chemotherapy meds were administered. At least
one medication error occurred with 17 of them (10 percent).
Twelve were administration errors (by the caregiver) and five
were prescribing errors (by the physician), involving 13
children (19 percent).

The authors note that most of the errors had little
clinical significance. However, three children had a higher
risk of relapse and one ran a higher risk of infection because
of the mistakes.

Nevertheless, Taylor and his associates report, the results
show that parents are as capable of administering oral chemo
drugs as well as medical professionals, who have been shown in
previous research to make even more errors.

SOURCE: Cancer, online August 14, 2006.