A new study, published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, states a significant number of children with complex medical conditions suffer from complications caused by medical devices necessary for their survival.
Study authors at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center say their research underscores the continued need to improve care for this growing population of children by enhancing safety practices and ensuring that device design is suitable or adaptable for pediatric patients.
Medical devices are a major factor in improving the survival rate for children with complex medical conditions but, they say, there has been relatively little research into how the medical devices may expose children to additional risks, since the devices are foreign objects to the human body and subject to mechanical problems or causing infections. Also, the researchers note that most medical devices are designed for adults and have to be adapted for use in children.
The retrospective study’s objective was to describe the prevalence and nature of adverse medical device events in 44 free-standing tertiary care children’s hospitals in the US. Using data from the Pediatric Health Information Systems, the researchers analyzed medical information from 2004-2011 and found that of the 4.1 million patient admissions during the study period, 3.3 percent (136,465) involved at least one adverse event (ADME) related to a medical device. While that number may seem small, the study identified more than 12,000 AMDEs during each year of the study. And because of how information is labeled in the system, they believe that the data actually underestimates the prevalence of AMDEs.
