Chemo mistakes reach kids
The vast majority of potentially harmful errors in chemotherapy for children with cancer do find their way to these young patients, a new study finds. And they are more often caused by dispensing or administration mistakes than by prescribing mix-ups, the researchers found.
In total, 85 percent of these drug errors are not spotted until the child receives the medication, according to a study led by Dr. Marlene Miller of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. These errors do not always cause harm to the child, the authors added, but they are always worrisome.
The Hopkins analysis of the United States Pharmacopeia’s voluntary medication error-reporting database, MEDMARX, also found that prescribing errors accounted for only 10 percent of cases occurring in patients under 18 years of age from 1999 to 2004. Instead, most of the mistakes arose from dispensing errors by pharmacy staff or administration blunders by nurses and other health-care workers.
A total of 310 chemotherapy errors for pediatric patients were logged during the study period, involving 69 institutions.
Cancer poll shows dental errors
More than 92 percent of Illinois dentists provide oral cancer examinations for patients, but many are not performing the procedures thoroughly or at optimum intervals, according to a University of Illinois at Chicago study.
With an incomplete understanding of the nature of pre-malignant lesions and of proper examination techniques, some dentists in Illinois “are not doing all they should be doing to detect oral cancers in their patients,” said Charles LeHew of the UIC Cancer Center’s Center for Population Health and Health Disparities and the Institute for Health Research and Policy.
More than 500 dentists in 19 Illinois counties responded to a questionnaire that was used to gauge knowledge of oral cancer prevention and detection. A greater than 60 percent response rate indicated that Illinois dentists “take seriously their important role in addressing the state’s oral cancer burden,” said LeHew, the lead researcher. And most dentists correctly identified squamous cell carcinoma, the most common oral cancer, and typical sites. Many, however, were not able to answer those questions correctly.
