This LA Times article appeared in today's Tennessean (Nashville). It's
good to see this advice being published.
Jim
January 14, 2010
A spoonful of medicine may be too much, or not enough
By Amina Khan
LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Heaping" teaspoon or "level"? That's the nail-biting dilemma that
usually confronts amateur boulangeries as they mix baking soda or salt
into their cake batter.
In medicine, though, the unreliability of your average spoon — and by
average spoon, we mean a tool more commonly used to stir sugar into
coffee — can create far more serious problems.
In a study in the Jan. 5 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine,
researchers asked student patients at the Cornell University health
clinic to pour out 5 milliliters of cold medicine into different-size
kitchen spoons. The researchers found that participants expressed
confidence in their measuring abilities, and yet "underdosed by 8.4
percent when using the medium-size spoon and overdosed by 11.6 percent
when using the larger spoon."
That may sound minimal, but consider someone who's making that same
mistake three to five times a day for a seven-day regimen. That can add
up. Overdosing can mean nasty and troublesome side effects. Underdosing
— on an antibiotic, for example — can lead to drug-resistant bacteria,
ultimately rendering the medication ineffective.
The lesson? Use a proper device — a measuring cap, a syringe or a dosing
spoon — to make that medicine go down.
And parents, before you pour any liquid into your kid's spoon (accurate
or not), make sure you have the proper dose for your child's age and weight.
Source:
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100114/FEATURES04/1140313/A+spoonful+of+medicine+may+be+too+much++or+not+enough
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
