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Many parents of severely food-allergic children, and food-allergic teenagers cannot correctly administer their self-injectable epinephrine and may not have the medication readily available. Pediatricians are not familiar with these devices and may fail to review their use with patients. Improved patient and physician education is needed to ensure proper use of this life-saving medication.
Pediatricians have difficulty with different steps in managing mild and severe anaphylaxis. Their deficiencies in management may result in failure to prevent recurrences of mild anaphylaxis and may increase mortality in severe anaphylaxis.
Only 10% of patients with allergies ever see an allergist, which helps explain the costs in cash, productivity, and life that allergic diseases continue to exact from Americans–$56 billion and 3500 fatalities from asthma alone.
In a survey of over 400 internists and pediatricians, researchers found that misconceptions about allergies were fairly common — particularly when it came to food allergies.
For example, one-third of all doctors, and half of internists, did not know the go-to treatment for a person who develops hives and vomiting after eating a known food allergen. (It’s an injection of epinephrine.)
The physicians all received six questions on allergy treatment, but because pediatricians treat children’s allergies, they answered three additional questions.
“We asked what the best first treatment was for a patient experiencing vomiting and hives after eating a known food allergen,” said allergist and ACAAI member Kara Wada, MD, lead study author. “Only 50 percent of internal medicine physicians knew it was epinephrine. And 85 percent of internal medicine physicians thought the flu vaccine shouldn’t be given to egg-allergic patients. It’s now known that it’s safe for those with egg allergies to get the flu shot.”
Other myths reported in the survey include:
Only 27 percent of the pediatric physicians correctly identified the most common causes of food allergy in children under 4 years of age as both eggs and milk. 34 percent identified strawberries and 13 percent thought it was artificial food coloring