2019 Update on Pediatric Medical Overuse: A Systematic Review

Importance Medical overuse is common in pediatrics and may lead to unnecessary care, resource use, and patient harm. Timely scrutiny of established and emerging practices can identify areas of overuse and empower clinicians to reconsider the balance of harms and benefits of the medical care that they provide. A literature review was conducted to identify the most important areas of pediatric medical overuse in 2018. Observations Consistent with prior methods, a structured MEDLINE search and manual table of contents review of selected pediatric journals for the 2018 literature was conducted identifying articles pertaining to pediatric medical overuse. The structured MEDLINE search consisted of a PubMed search for articles with the Medical Subject Headings termhealth services misuseormedical overuseor article titles containing the termunnecessary,inappropriate,overutilization, oroveruse. Articles containing the termoveruse injuryoroveruse injurieswere excluded, along with articles not published in English and those not constituting original research. The same search was performed using Embase with the additional Emtree termunnecessary procedure. Each article was evaluated by 3 independent raters for quality of methods, magnitude of potential harm, and number of patients potentially harmed. Ten articles were identified based on scores and appraisal of overall potential harm. This year’s review identified both established and emerging practices that may warrant deimplementation. Examples of such established practices include antibiotic prophylaxis for urinary tract infections, routine opioid prescriptions, prolonged antibiotic courses for latent tuberculosis, and routine intensive care admission and pharmacologic therapy for neonatal abstinence syndrome. Emerging practices that merit greater inspection and discouragement of widespread adoption include postdischarge nurse-led home visits, probiotics for gastroenteritis, and intensive cardiac screening programs for athletes. Conclusions and Relevance This year’s review highlights established and emerging practices that represent medical overuse in the pediatric setting. Deimplementation of disproven practices and careful examination of emerging practices are imperative to prevent unnecessary resource use and patient harm.