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Tag: epinephrine

  • Epinephrine Pen Needles Too Short For Obese Children

    Schools in 29 states in the United States have decided to keep epinephrine pens in stock in case a student were to have a severe allergic reactions. Schools all over the country were unsure if stocking up on the epi-pens was a good idea or not. Many feared that the officials who were in charge of storing the pens and handing them out may become irresponsible, or offer the pens up too soon or when they were not really needed. Most decided it was better to have them onhand in case of an emergency.

    With the decision to keep these pens on hands comes a new problem. Many doctors fear that epinphrine pen needles are not long enough to penetrate the skin of children that are obese.

    “Epinephrine works best when injected into the muscle,” lead author Dr. Mary Colleen Bhalla said. “When it is injected into the fat layer of the skin it takes longer to reach the blood stream.”

    The short needles do not mean that the medication will not be effective, it just means it will take longer for it to start working. When someone is having a severe allergic reaction, time is off the essence. Most allergic reactions cause airways to swell shut and if the epinephrine cannot reduce the swelling fast enough, the person suffering from the attack could suffocate.

    One size fits all needles are not a logical solution. A study shows that obese people could best benefit by using a epinephrine pens with longer needles. Thinner people would not be able to use long needles because they would hit the bone.

    A 25mm needle as been approved and will be available in late 2013 in the UK, Germany and Sweden. The United States is likely to approve needles of this size as well. School can then consider carrying epinephrine pens in various sizes will be effective to all students.

    Image from Wikimedia Commons.

  • Epinephrine Pens Now Stocked at Schools in 29 States

    Schools around the United States have been managing a new anxiety: whether or not their students will drop dead during recess of unanticipated allergic shock. Fox News reported that 15 states enacted laws permitting their schools to carry epinephrine pens, joining the 11 that already have.

    Parents are slightly torn over the issue: while some parents worry that an irresponsible school official might misdiagnose a situation (since some of the states that permitted Epi-Pens eliminated their school nurses), other parents worry about what would happen if the schools didn’t keep extra Epi-Pens in case a child needed one.

    The House of Representatives had passed legislation in July that gives states that create epinephrine policies for schools will receive special preference when applying for asthma grants, which likely explains the deluge of states suddenly permitting their schools to stock Epi-Pens.

    In Tennessee, which permitted Epi-Pens in schools just this year, school nurse Amanda Williams found herself using one almost immediately when a third-grader suffered a wasp sting, triggering an asthma attack. The ER doctor informed the third-grader’s parents that without that quick epinephrine injection, their son may have died. “It would have been tragic,” Williams said of the incident.

    The senior vice president of public policy and advocacy for the Allergy Foundation, Charlotte Collins, said the rapidly-spreading trend is probably connected to the death of a Virginia first-grader, who died of cardiac arrest in a hospital after eating a nut on a playground. Experts, in that case, speculated that the girl would still be alive if the school had retained an Epi-Pen on hand.

    Dr. Michael Pistiner, a pediatric allergist, said of the new trend that “Epinephrine is the first line treatment for these severe reactions… Studies show that delays in treatment with epinephrine increase risk of death.”

    The laws apply quite differently across the states: while Virginia, Maryland, Nebraska, and Nevada are the only states to require epinephrine doses to be kept on hand, most of the other states merely allow Epi-Pens to be stored at school.

    [Image via an identical YouTube report to the one featured above]

  • Food Allergies on the Rise: EpiPen Legislation

    Food Allergy has become a growing concern for Americans, particularly parents of school-age children. There have been several documented deaths amongst students exposed to allergens at school. There is a high probability that these students would have survived, had they been given immediate access to epinephrine.

    This week, on October 2nd, the U.S. Senate will come to a decision on H.R. 2094: School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act. The bill passed in the House in July of this year, and basically mandates that all schools have EpiPens readily available for any student having an allergic reaction to food.

    In many cases, students and parents aren’t aware of a particular food allergy until the initial reaction. As children are exposed to new and different foods in schools, there is a greater chance that the initial allergic reaction to food occurs at school. Unfortunately, many people are unaware of the severity of food allergies, and how quickly one can go from exposure to death. In some instances, an anaphylactic reaction (response to allergen) occurs within seconds of being exposed to an allergen. For some, this reaction can occur by skin contact with an allergen, and actual ingestion is not necessary for a severe reaction to take place.

    It will definitely help to save lives if schools are equipped to immediately recognize and treat food allergy reactions. Still, a larger concern that is less discussed is the fact that food allergies have significantly increased in less than fifteen years. In order to improve life quality and save lives on a greater scale, we must recognize the underlying causes and address them accordingly.

    A study recently released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that food allergies have increased by 50% from 1997 to 2011. FARE, the Food Allergy Research and Education organization, reports that though there is awareness of such a significant increase, there are no reported causes.

    In similar situations, part of the increase is due to medically recognizing and documenting the condition which had not previously been done. Still, that does not account for the dramatic spike in numbers. There is clearly an overload of toxins that the human body cannot fight without eventually turning against itself. It may be the polluted air and water, the processed foods, a combination of all of these, or something entirely differently.

    Whether Senate passes this bill or not, it has definitely helped raise awareness on rise of food allergies and its significant side effects. Hopefully, this will prompt thorough research on the causes of such allergies.

    Image via FARE