The drug therapy for children is problematic. There is a lack of safe drugs developed or adapted for children. Clinical studies in children are complex and therefore rare or lacking. Reliable data on drug use in paediatrics in Switzerland and abroad is therefore only partially available. At the same time, there is an urgent need for drug therapy in children. For this reason, drugs that are only approved for adults (so-called “off-label use”) or that are not (yet) permitted (“unlicensed use”) are very often used in the treatment of children.
The situation carries with it the risk that drugs are used by children in too small (insufficient effectiveness) or too high dosages (toxicity). Medication errors therefore occur more frequently in children than in adults. In addition to difficult application due to a lack of suitable galenic forms, medication errors are mostly caused by prescription errors due to a lack of information about the correct administration. There is a lack of uniform dosage recommendations. This situation is unsatisfactory and there is broad consensus that the safety of medicinal products for children needs to be improved. For this reason, paediatricians have been calling for years for greater safety of medicinal products for children.