When many of us seniors were kids, chances are a doctor may have prescribed penicillin or a penicillin derivative for you to take. Hundreds of thousands of kids may have developed a slight rash or some other symptoms that caused the doctor to immediately say that you are allergic to penicillin. That allergy information follows you for the rest of your life. No doctor will prescribe any penicillin drug for you nor will any reliable pharmacist fill such a prescription with your allergy information in the system.

This is what happened to my wife when she very young. A doctor gave her penicillin and she developed a minor rash, prompting the doctor to label her as allergic to penicillin. Over the years, she has had chronic sinus problems as well as her fair share of urinary tract infections (UTIs) and a few kidney infections, but her doctors could not prescribe her anything related to penicillin to help cure those conditions. To make matters worse, she has had an adverse reaction to a sulfa drug after we were married, so that is in her history as well. One doctor trying to treat her for a sinus infection, told her that since she can’t take penicillin or sulfa drugs, that he was very limited as what he could prescribe to help her, as most drugs used for this are one or the other of the two she is allergic to.

She recently has seen an ENT (ear nose throat) doctor for her sinus issues and that ended up resulting in some allergy tests. She mentioned to the doctor about her allergy to penicillin, so he conducted an in-office test with a penicillin drug, amoxicillin, to see what if any reaction she had. He was prepared for the worse in case she had a severe reaction. It turned out she had NO reaction. The doctor told her that many people were labeled as being allergic to penicillin when they were very young, when in fact they probably weren’t. He also said that many people outgrow the allergy as they get older. Since that time, she was prescribed a penicillin drug for something else and she had no problem taking it which means that all these years, she probably could have been easily treated, but no one dared to find out.

A recent report indicates that this type of misinformation of people who erroneously believe they have an allergy to penicillin, may have a 50% greater risk of developing an infection after having surgery. Lead researcher Dr. Kimberly Blumenthal commented on the study:

“This study has direct clinical significance.”

“We already know that more than 95 percent of patients who believe they have penicillin allergy can actually tolerate the drug.”

The study was based upon reviewing 8,400 cases of surgery, mostly for hip or knee replacement, hysterectomy, colon surgery and heart bypass, all of which are more common with the older we get. Over 900 cases reported some kind of infection generally at the incision site, some of which were severe and led to death. The rate of infection was nearly double for patients who were listed as being allergic to penicillin.

If you have been labeled as being allergic to penicillin, there is a good chance that was either wrong from the beginning or you’ve outgrown it. See an allergist and ask to get tested to see if you really are allergic to penicillin. Having that test done may help save your life later on.