Aspirin overdosage: incidence, diagnosis, and management.

The importance of aspirin as a cause of poisoning in children has declined dramatically with safety packaging and reductions in the dose of flavored children's aspirin per package. Although flavoring entices children to ingest more tablets, the increment is less than the dose differential between the children's and adults' preparations, and so the latter pose the greater hazard in the individual case. Chronic poisoning of children during therapy with aspirin is aggravated by the peculiar kinetics of the drug, but is preventable and constitutes no essential basis for the substitution of acetaminophen, which may not be devoid of risk factors in sick children. Salicylate levels are essential in the diagnosis and management of intoxication. In treatment, emphasis should be on trapping salicylate in the plasma and eventually the urine--through ionization to prevent its entry into the brain.