International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | August 2016 | Vol 4 | Issue 8 Page 3498 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Vaghela MM et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2016 Aug;4(8):3498-3503 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Research Article An analysis of ear discharge and antimicrobial sensitivity to the bacteria used in its treatment Mukund M. Vaghela*, Hiren Doshi, Sneha Rajput INTRODUCTION Children are unique population with distinct development and physiological differences from adults, clinical trials in children are essential to develop age-specific, empirically – verified therapies and interventions to determine and improve the best medical treatment available. 1 Even widely used pediatric medications may have the potential for serious adverse effects. Indeed, many of the medications that are being used currently for children have never been tested rigorously for pediatric safety and efficacy, a problem that federal regulators have been attempting to resolve over the past decades. 2 Calculation of dose of drugs prescribed for pediatric population remains the major challenge for paediatricians. Iatrogenic injuries occur frequently in hospitalized patients and often remains the serious sequelae. 3 As the pharmacokinetics in infants and children are different, simple proportionate reduction in the adult dose may not be adequate to determine a safe and effective pediatric dose. 4-6 A large number of children’s drug dosage rules have been described, almost all using percentage of an adult dose to calculate an appropriate child’s dose. An advantage of these rules is that modifications to adult doses to allow for sickness in adults are appropriately incorporated in to calculations for children. 7-9 Reports in the literature quote many examples of prescription errors in children, of 2-10 times the recommended dose. 10-14 This study was designed to analyze the appropriateness of dose of drugs prescribed in ABSTRACT Background: Children are unique population with distinct development and physiological differences from adults, clinical trials in children are essential to develop age-specific, empirically – verified therapies and interventions to determine and improve the best medical treatment available. The aim of this study was to find out the appropriateness and accuracy of the dose of drugs prescribed and compares it with standard dose. Methods: Total 400 prescriptions were collected from the OPD of the paediatrics of Shree Krishna Hospital, Karamsad. Calculation of standard total daily dose for each drug was done by using Clark’s formula and was compared with that of prescribed dose of that particular drug. Results: Total 1042 drugs were prescribed. Among antibiotics (22%) statistically significant difference in the prescribed and standard total daily dose was observed with cefexime [t-value 28.6>1.96 for 95% confidence interval] and metronidazole [t-value2.03>1.96 for 95% confidence interval], NSAIDs (31%), Paracetamol [t-value11.14>1.96 for 95% confidence interval] and antihistaminics (22%), phenylephrine [t-value7.1>1.96 for 95% confidence interval], cetrizine [t-value2.4>2.00 for 95% confidence interval]. Conclusions: Results show that prescribed doses of commonly used drugs were higher than the standard dose. This is directly related to the occurrence and severity of adverse drug reactions. Keywords: Prescribed drugs, Dose and body weight Department of ENT, Smt. NHL MMC, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India Received: 19 June 2016 Accepted: 08 July 2016 *Correspondence: Dr. Mukund M. Vaghela, E-mail: akansha_prajapati@yahoo.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20162319