Five strategies identified that help get the medicine down
TUESDAY, April 21, 2015 (HealthDay News) — At least five different strategies may help children swallow pills and capsules more easily, according to research published online April 20 in Pediatrics.
The researchers looked for all studies from 1986 to 2013 that focused on improving difficulties with pill swallowing for children. They found five studies that identified a successful method to help children swallow pills more easily.
The successful strategies included using flavored throat spray first, giving children verbal instructions, behavioral therapies, using a specialized pill cup, and training children to use five different head postures.
“Pill swallowing difficulty is not an uncommon problem, and there are resources that may be available to children based on their particular difficulty,” study coauthor Kathleen Bradford, M.D., a pediatrician at North Carolina Children’s Hospital in Chapel Hill, told HealthDay. “Addressing this problem and researching more effective ways to implement these interventions can help improve medication administration and compliance in children.”
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