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Blood Cancer &
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Leukemia Cancer Information
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Leukemia Cancer News - Return to Menu Leukemia drugs given wrongly 20% of time in study By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP August 14, 2006 - Kids with leukemia who are treated as outpatients at Seattle Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center have about a one in five chance of being given the wrong medication or the wrong dosage, a study published today indicates. Most of the mistakes the researchers found were trivial, although three could have caused problems -- but did not -- for the children, said the lead researcher, Dr. James Taylor, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington Medical Center. Taylor, who is director of the newborn nursery, said he was amazed at how well the doctors who prescribed treatment and the parents who administered the drugs did in the study. "I thought it was going to be a lot higher, based on some other studies," he said late last week. Taylor's study is being published in the Aug. 14 issue of Cancer, a scientific journal published by the American Cancer Society. The hospital's self-study, conducted over a two-month period in 2005, involved children diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is the most common malignancy diagnosed in children. About a third of all children with cancer have this disease. The study at Children's Hospital, which is part of the University of Washington system, looked at each possible point for medication error: from the doctor's prescription to the pharmacy to dosing by parents or caregivers. Taylor and his team found errors at every point along the way, except for the pharmacy, where no mistakes were made. The study looked at 69 patients receiving 172 chemotherapy medications and found one or more errors involving 17 medications and an unconfirmed possibility of more errors in 12 more drugs. "The problem of medication errors among children receiving oral outpatient chemotherapy agents is particularly significant," Taylor said in the report in the journal Cancer. The medications are particularly toxic and have narrow therapeutic windows, so mistakes can be life-threatening.
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