title: Drug utilization in the pediatric intensive care unit: monitoring prescribing trends and establishing prioritization of pharmacotherapeutic evaluation of critically ill children.
abstract: The primary objective of this study was to characterize the drug exposure for children hospitalized in the authors' institution's pediatric intensive care unit for the year 2002. Secondary objectives included the examination of drug utilization differences among various age criteria and the suitability of the most prevalent resources for pediatric dosing guidance. Many of the most commonly prescribed agents in the pediatric intensive care unit fall into the broad categories of pain management/sedation and anti-infectives. Based on the generally narrow windows afforded by each of these drug classes, it is obvious that more, well-defined investigations in critically ill children are warranted. The existing dosing guidance for many of these agents is neither generalizable nor sufficient to accommodate the diversity in pediatric intensive care unit patients, and the current drug monographs fall short of any practical dosing information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
authors.forename: Athena F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Zuppa
authors.forename: Peter C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Adamson
authors.forename: John T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Mondick
authors.forename: Lauren A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.forename: Deborah A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Maka
authors.forename: Mahesh
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Narayan
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Nicholson
authors.forename: Dimple
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.forename: Kathryn R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Collison
authors.forename: Jeffrey S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Barrett
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004363:Drug Utilization; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D015278:Intensive Care Units, Pediatric / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015143:Philadelphia; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic