This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

PATRICIA J. FLANAGAN, MD; ANTHONY J. ALARIO, MD; JOHN S. O'SHEA, MD; GEORGES PETER, MD
Department of Pediatrics Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University 593 Eddy St Providence, RI 02903

Am J Dis Child. 1989;143(5):517-518.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Sir.—Febrile and local reactions to diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and pertussis (DTP) vaccine are a frequent and major concern to parents and a source of discomfort to children. Among the most common reactions is fever, which occurs in 47% of immunized children.¹ As a result, some pediatricians may empirically prescribe prophylactic antipyretic therapy at the time of vaccination. The extent of this practice has not been documented to our knowledge and, until recently, the benefit of such therapy has not been examined.

To assess the frequency of this practice, we conducted a survey of community-based pediatricians to determine whether, and under what circumstances, they recommended prophylactic antipyretic therapy for children receiving DTP vaccine. The survey was performed before recently published reports documented the effectiveness of prophylactic acetaminophen therapy with DTP immunization.^2,3 Despite the lack of studies documenting the usefulness of antipyretics, we anticipated that our survey would . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?