Conservative Approach to Antibiotic Dosing in Children

When your child suffers from a complication of the respiratory system, it is not uncommon for your pediatrician to prescribe an antibiotic. However, in many cases, antibiotic therapy may lead to further complications, especially when the wrong antibiotic is prescribed.

To aid pediatricians in prescribing antibiotics for children with respiratory complications, the Alliance Working for Antibiotic Resistance (AWARE) is providing information and guidelines to physicians.

The most important aspect of your child's health treatment, and use of antibiotics, is in obtaining the right diagnosis. When a respiratory complication is present, the pediatrician must first work through the variety of symptoms to formulate a diagnosis on which to prescribe an antibiotic. It is important to understand that not all health complications will even require an antibiotic for treatment.

Once your pediatrician has made a diagnosis, the next assessment that will aid in prescribing is the degree to which your child is in pain. Assessing pain is a key part of determining if an antibiotic should be used. Often, when an antibiotic is not prescribed, the use of over-the-counter pain relievers are quite effective.

Using narrow based antibiotics is always best. As a general rule, when an antibiotic is needed, your child's pediatrician should consider narrow based antibiotics before going to broad-based prescription. By prescribing a narrow-based antibiotic, allowing 72 hours for improvement, your pediatrician can best ascertain the antibiotic that works. While this may not seem cost effective and seems time consuming, many health experts agree that managing a child's illness with antibiotics requires more than one office visit.