More Than 70,000 Children a Year Hurt by Medical Devices
It shows that more than 70,000 teens and children go to emergency rooms every year for because of problems with medical devices.
Out of the roughly 145,000 medical device related complications studied almost 34,000 were related to problems with contact lenses. The complications or injuries include eye abrasions and infections.
Sometimes these problems could be prevented by not wearing the contact lenses for too long a period without cleansing them.
Additional common problem that were found were related to ear tube infections in young children, wounds from broken hypodermic needles that were used to inject legal or illegal drugs, and injuries that teenage girls suffered during gynecological exams.
The most pressing problems were related to devices that had been implanted. Overdoses and infections were the most common problems associated with devices such as insulin pumps, chest catheters, and brain shunts. Approximately 6% of kids with these problems had to be hospitalized.
The head of emergency medicine at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Dr. Steven Krug, said that, “Health care providers need to be aware of these kids and their devices and how to recognize or diagnose” related problems.”
