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Can I use adult acetaminophen for my 11 year old son?


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He is 105 pounds, so the dosage calculates out to 640 mg. The adult acetaminophen comes in 500 mg caplets, so he could take one and be well under the limit.

 

The instructions say not to give it to anyone under 12 due to overdose and liver damage.

 

I am wondering if there is something different about the children's acetaminophen that makes it okay to give to kids. I don't have any kid's medicine on hand and would like to avoid a trip to the store. Thanks!

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Drugs are generally dosed by weight. My 95# 15 year old and 75# 12 yo each take adult doses, but I do have them take a single tylenol or advil, not two. I wouldn't hesitate to give a 100# 10 or 11 year old a single tylenol or advil. If you check the children's formulations for dosage, I am confident you'd find that you were in the prescribed range for their weight by giving a single adult tablet.

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We have given my daughter adult doses of medicine as needed for a while. It is mostly by weight not age. She weighs over 100 pounds.

 

By the same reasoning we do NOT give adult dosage to my ds11 because he is extremely skinny. We also dose him by weight and that means he gets a much smaller dose than would be expected by his age. He might make 65 pounds sopping wet, maybe.

 

(We keep tylenol in the house and use it instead of ibuprofen because *I* am allergic to aspirin and all other NSAIDS and the risk of one of the kids having a reaction is enough that I don't use it as a first choice.)

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Yep...they are "adults" as far as medicine goes at age 12. I don't like acetaminophen as a drug...too many baaaad side effects with plain old normal dosing. I never give it to my kids. It isn't even in my house. I recommend ibuprofen instead.

 

I agree. Acetaminophen is probably the most dangerous OTC drug available. Its therapeutic index (ratio of toxic dose to effective dose) is ridiculously low. It's extremely toxic to the liver, and deaths by accidental overdose are very common. There was just a story in the news recently about a young British woman who died from acetaminophen overdose. She'd had minor surgery and her doctor had told her to take eight tablets a day. She took 10 or 12 for several days and it destroyed her liver. She received a liver transplant, but died anyway. This kind of story is distressingly common. If acetaminophen was a new drug, it wouldn't even come close to meeting FDA requirements for safety. We won't have the stuff in the house.

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I give my daughter the 250. I got them from the pharmacist. He did a special order for regular not extra strength. They cost 1.24. Much cheaper. I would go ahead and give an 11 yo one of the 250 but if you wanted to keep the lower dose ones in your cabinet it is nice to give one of those for the kids.

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Weight-based dosing for tylenol or ibuprofen (any med, really) is the safest way to go. While overdosing your kiddo is the most obvious concern, underdosing can be a problem, particularly if treating a fever. I work in the ER, we see this a lot - parents are giving whatever fever reducing med and it isn't working, only to find out their dosing is way off. There are calculators and charts online for finding the correct dose. I have a 7 year old that prefers to swallow pills, we've been using the lower strength tablets for him if he has needed anything (which, thankfully, is a rare occurence.)

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