Off-Label Drug Use in Pediatrics

Off-Label Drug Use in Pediatrics
There are various circumstances under which children should be prescribed drugs for off-label use. One such circumstance is when there is a lack of an approved and safe alternative for the particular illness the pediatric patient has. Most drugs have been developed and tested for the adult population. Only a few drugs have been adequately tested and approved for use in pediatric care (Pratico et al., 2018). Therefore, it is quite common for this circumstance to prevail in clinical settings. Since pediatric care must be ensured, the best fallback plan is to use an off-label drug plan when there is a lack of alternative approved medications. The second circumstance is where prescribing drugs could potentially harm the patient. The pediatric patient may have a complicated illness that cannot be effectively managed by an approved drug. In such circumstances, the clinician must decide on the best off-label drugs to use to manage the complication.
Thirdly, off-label drugs may be used in circumstances where the approved standard drugs have failed to work. There may be cases where the pediatric patient may fail to respond to the standard medication. The best fallback plan would be to manage the condition using off-label drugs. Fourthly, a clinician may decide to use off-label drugs when there exists adequate persuasive evidence that such drugs have been shown to improve the condition of patients with a certain complicated conditions (Yackey et al., 2019). Here is an excellent example of this phenomenon. A clinician may decide to use a chemotherapy drug for one type of cancer to manage a different kind of cancer.
Several strategies can be used to make the off-label use and dosage of drugs safer for children from infancy to adolescence. One great strategy would be for drug producers to provide a more detailed summary of product characteristics (smpc...