Emily Heil, PharmD, BCPS-AQ ID, assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, shares an effective stewardship intervention for ruling out if someone is allergic to penicillin.
Emily Heil, PharmD, BCPS-AQ ID, assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, shares an effective stewardship intervention for ruling out if someone is allergic to penicillin.
Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)
“Penicillin-related allergies and the antibodies that mediate those allergies can actually disappear over time. [In] up to 80% of patients that reported a penicillin allergy as a child over [about] a 10-year period, you can actually see a lot of those antibodies go away. So, just because a patient had an allergy in the past to an antibiotic, doesn’t mean that they still do, and that’s why something like penicillin skin testing to rule out a current allergy can be an effective stewardship intervention.”
