2025 update on paediatric healthcare overuse

OBJECTIVES: In this article, we identify and summarise articles describing 10 current, impactful topics related to paediatric healthcare overuse for articles published between 2023 and 2024. DESIGN: Articles were identified using a manual table of contents review of high-impact journals and a PubMed search strategy and then scored using an established three-score rubric based on strength of methods, magnitude of potential harm and number of patients harmed. Afterwards, the most impactful articles were selected by author consensus and summarised in this review. RESULTS: We identified 212 articles related to paediatric healthcare overuse between the manual and PubMed search strategies. Twelve articles describing 10 topics were selected by author consensus in the following areas: harms of proton pump inhibitors, constraints of lipid screening, early discharge for patients with febrile neutropenia, oral antibiotics for bone and joint infections, ultrasound evaluation of fractures, opioid stewardship for neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome and reduced treatment duration, imaging and prophylaxis for urinary tract infections. CONCLUSION: Our review identifies and highlights impactful articles that build on a previous body of literature and introduces more recent areas of paediatric healthcare overuse.