Background: Lack of information about medication effects and use in children is a long-standing and troublesome policy issue. Documenting patterns of use for medications with potential for suboptimal use and adverse effects, such as oral corticosteroids, would be useful.
Objective: To describe the use of oral corticosteroids among children enrolled in TennCare, Tennessee's managed care program for Medicaid enrollees and uninsured individuals.
Design: A retrospective cohort study. DRUG EXPOSURE: Children enrolled in TennCare who had prescriptions filled in their name for oral corticosteroids during 1998 were identified. Descriptive information included age, race, sex, and county of residence. We identified possible indications for corticosteroid use for new users by searching encounter files for encounters temporally related to the index prescription. Subsequent use of corticosteroids was measured in the 365 days after the index prescription.
Results: Of 400 724 children continuously enrolled in TennCare during the study period, 29 362 (7327 per 100 000) children had a prescription filled for an oral corticosteroid. Steroid prescription filling was more common among young children and male children and less common among black children. Children in rural counties had oral corticosteroid prescriptions filled at a higher rate than children residing in urban counties. Nearly 75% of corticosteroid users filled only 1 prescription during the study period; 1319 children filled 4 or more prescriptions. Asthma was the most common indication for oral corticosteroid use (16%), whereas 1 in 5 users (22%) had an unknown indication for oral corticosteroid use.
Conclusions: A large number of children enrolled in TennCare had a prescription for oral corticosteroids filled in 1998. Further population-based studies describing the development of adverse effects in users of corticosteroids would be important.