Ondansetron for Home Use: Use It or Lose It?

Investigators from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and the University of California Davis conducted a retrospective study to describe prescribing patterns for ondansetron in children discharged from an ED and evaluate the impact of receipt of a prescription on return ED visits. For the study, they reviewed data on children 0–18 years old seen at the ED of an urban pediatric university teaching hospital between 2012 and 2014. Two overlapping groups of patients were included in the study using ICD-9 codes: those diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis (AGE group) and those prescribed ondansetron at discharge from the ED for any reason (ondansetron group). Data abstracted …