Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

House Calls, June 28, 2012

Posted on June 28, 2012June 28, 2012 by Staff

Practicing family physicians from the UNC Department of Family Medicine have teamed up with The Carrboro Citizen to bring you a weekly feature responding to your questions about health and medicine. Send your questions or comments to yourhealth@unc.edu

This week we respond to questions about petechiae and combining ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

Dear HOUSE Calls, I have had petechiae for a while and they are getting worse. What should I do?

To explain to other readers, petechiae are bright red or purple small spots on the skin indicating that blood has leaked out of the capillaries or smallest blood vessels. They can get bigger and look more like bruising. Anybody with new, acute petechiae, especially if they are associated with a fever, should seek prompt medical attention. This can indicate a serious medical disease like meningitis. If the petechiae have been present for a while, we would recommend you see your physician. We see this pretty often when people take aspirin or other medicines (e.g., ibuprofen or Plavix) that interfere with platelet function. However, this can be a symptom of a more serious problem with platelet numbers or function. A simple blood count can give your doctor a lot of information in sorting this out.

Dear HOUSE Calls, My son recently got his wisdom teeth out and the oral surgeon said he should take 600mg of ibuprofen three to four times per day for pain and Percocet as needed for severe pain. Is that safe? Could so much acetaminophen or ibuprofen cause liver or kidney damage?

We commonly recommend the combination of acetaminophen and ibuprofen, especially for fevers in young children and for pain in adults. There is no particular problem with this combination, as long as both are used in safe doses and the person taking the medicines does not have a particular problem with the liver or kidneys. There should be some caution in the use of acetaminophen for people with liver problems and some caution in the use of ibuprofen for people with kidney problems. However, how much to worry depends on the problem and how bad it is. Further, the combination does not create a need for any extra or special caution with the kidneys or liver. As long as your son has healthy kidneys (and is not prone to ulcers) a maximum dose of 2400mg per day of ibuprofen is safe and a maximum dose of 3000mg of acetaminophen is safe.

House Calls is a weekly column by Dr. Adam Goldstein, Dr. Cristy Page and Dr. Adam Zolotor on behalf of Your Health and the UNC Department of Family Medicine.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme