Off label prescribing to children in primary care in Germany: retrospective cohort study

Abstract

Editorial by Banner and pp 1312, 1313 Between 35% and 90% of the drugs prescribed to hospitalised children are either not licensed for children's use or are prescribed outside the terms of their product licence (off label prescribing). 1 2 Subsequent adverse reactions are more likely than with licensed products (6.0% v 3.9%).3 We analysed the extent of prescribing off labelled products in a representative cohort of children in primary care. We used the electronic database of prescriptions of Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse, Baden-Württemberg. This health insurer covers more than four million people, 42% of the total population of the state. We retrospectively reviewed 1.74 million anonymous prescriptions written by 6886 office based doctors—specialists in paediatric, general, or internal medicine—between 1 January and 31 March 1999 for 455 661 patients aged 0-16 years. View this table: Most frequent off label drugs prescribed to outpatients aged 0-16 years for peroral, rectal, or nasal administration at the expense of Allgemeine …