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Dimenhydrinate may not reduce vomiting in children with gastroenteritis
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Children with acute gastroenteritis treated with oral dimenhydrinate did not experience significantly fewer incidents of vomiting than patients receiving a placebo, according to recent results.
The double blind, placebo-controlled trial included 144 children aged 1 to 12 years who presented at a pediatric university-affiliated emergency department for acute gastroenteritis with five or more incidents of vomiting in the previous 12 hours. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either four doses of 1 mg/kg oral dimenhydrinate every six hours (n=74) or four placebo doses (n=70).
Treatment failure occurred in 23 patients (31%) in the dimenhydrinate group and 20 (29%) in the placebo group (difference 0.02; 95% CI, –0.12 to 0.17). Adverse events occurred in similar proportions between the two groups (53% in the treated group vs. 54% in the placebo group), with drowsiness, which occurred in 42% of the treated group and 37% of the placebo group, as the primary effect. No differences were found in the mean numbers of vomiting or diarrhea, incidence of abdominal pain or nausea, the duration of symptoms, revisit rates or rates of intravenous catheter insertion between the groups. Researchers also performed a per-protocol analysis of 105 participants who received all four doses, and found no association between treatment arms and outcomes.
“The prescription of oral dimenhydrinate did not significantly reduce the proportion of children experiencing recurrent vomiting in those experiencing acute gastroenteritis compared with placebo,” the researchers wrote. “No significant adverse effects were encountered with the use of dimenhydrinate in the study population."
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