Physicians and parents are using a variety of health-related gadgets and gizmos that communicate with our smartphones and tablets. These range from fitness devices that monitor daily exercise, to glucometers used by diabetics to monitor sugar levels, to sphygmomanometers used to measure blood pressure.
There is precious little pediatricians do or are encouraged to do during clinical visits for young children to help lower the risk of obesity, a pediatric researcher told an Academy of Medicine panel in October.
Teenagers who spend most of their time online comparing their lives to others may experience increased depression and anxiety. See what you can do to help.
‘Itch-scratch-itch’….is a typical chief complaint for many children who present to the pediatric primary care office. The infant is irritable and the mother wants the infant to stop being irritable; the child, or adolescent wants to stop ‘feeling itchy’; and their parents want medications that will immediately return the skin to normal. What a dilemma!
Cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS), a variant of migraine, was first described in the literature over a century ago, but in 2015, it remains commonly unrecognized and misdiagnosed.
Parents who decline or are non-compliant with medical recommendations are not only putting their child at risk, but also the pediatrician, said James P Scibilia, MD, a private practitioner in Beaver, Pennsylvania, and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Medical Liability and Risk Management.
Management of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children is evolving as a result of changes in the microbial etiology of the disease and advances in diagnostic techniques.
Evidence-based recommendations on selective and universal lipid screening in childhood released by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in 2011 were endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and are integrated in the Bright Futures guidelines on pediatric health maintenance.
Clinicians should refrain from making a diagnosis of “breast milk jaundice” because it is often inappropriate, results in unnecessary discontinuation of breastfeeding, and by delaying accurate identification of the etiology for the symptom, may expose the child to undue risk of severe neonatal hyperbilirubinemia.
Many of the prescriptions written for management of children’s behavioral/mental health issues stem from situations in which families, practitioners, or both feel that medication is the only practical solution to a child’s chronic or acute needs. Nonmedication-based solutions, however, are more practical than they may seem, said Lawrence Wissow, MD, MPH, professor of health, behavior, and society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland.
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) remains an important public health issue as it ranks as the third leading cause of infant mortality, but co-sleeping is a reality. A session discusses how to effectively communicate safe sleeping practices with adults.
Media use by children and adolescents is part of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Agenda For Children, but pediatricians may find it challenging to fit anticipatory guidance on this topic into the well-child visit.
The issue of overdiagnosis in medicine has been brought to center stage by recent and proposed changes to screening guidelines for prostate and breast cancer. Overdiagnosis, however, is also a problem in the pediatric population, cautioned Eric Coon, MD, assistant clinical professor of pediatrics, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Changes in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) relating to trauma and stressor-related disorders have important implications for optimizing care of pediatric patients.
There is no question that pediatricians are experienced in managing constipation considering its prevalence among children. Research shows, however, that the majority of pediatricians are not aware of recently released evidence-based recommendations for both the diagnostic evaluation of children with constipation and the treatment of functional constipation, said Samuel Nurko, MD, MPH, associate professor of pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Breastfeeding may not make smarter babies, according to a new report from the UK, but CDC says it still makes healthier babies overall and hospitals have more work to do in order to provide optimal support for nursing mothers.
Women who receive the prophylactic bivalent human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine within 90 days of pregnancy are not at an increased risk for miscarriage, underscoring the safety of the vaccine. The proven safety of the bivalent HPV vaccine should quell the concerns of women and their health care practitioners.
The CDC now recommends that high-risk infants undergo postvaccination serologic testing between 9 and 12 months, updated from 9-18 months. The new vaccination interval can better cover at risk infants from HBV infection and also help ensure a higher adherence to the immunoprophylaxis protocol.
The staff of Contemporary Pediatrics has packed and is ready to depart for American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition in the nation’s capital.
Roughly a quarter of all college students are sexually victimized in some way, but many will never report their crime. Pediatricians can counsel college-bound patients about the risks and prevention strategies, and should learn to recognize the signs of unreported abuse.
Children in foster care suffer from a wide range of physical, emotional, and developmental impairments but generally receive inadequate care before, during, and after foster care placement. Early and frequent intervention by pediatricians is key to mitigating the trauma these children suffer and to improve long-term outcomes.
Malnutrition among pediatric patients is an ongoing problem that is often underdiagnosed. A new report examines alternate methods for recognizing malnutrition beyond anthropometric percentiles.
A third of US children and teens eat fast food daily, and more than 12% consume nearly half of their daily calories from fast food, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
Staphylococcus aureus plays an important role in the pathogenesis and course of atopic dermatitis. Compared to the normal pediatric population, atopic patients are especially susceptible to colonization and recurrent infections of S aureus.
Barring a last minute reprieve, International Classification of Diseases version 10 (ICD-10) diagnostic coding went into effect the first of this month. If you read my March 2015, Peds v2.0 article on ICD-10 adoption-and heeded the advice contained therein-you have successfully implemented ICD-10, and everything is going smoothly now.
A healthy 10-year-old boy is brought to your office by his worried father for evaluation of an asymptomatic birthmark on his left ankle. It has grown proportionately and does not cause pain or interfere with normal function. What’s the diagnosis?
A nationally representative survey of more than 1000 mothers of infants aged 2 to 6 months showed that mothers report receiving little or inappropriate advice-even from physicians-about 5 key infant care practices: immunization, breastfeeding, sleep position, sleep location, and pacifier use.
After the implosion late last year of the 14-year effort for a comprehensive national study of the environmental effects on children, Congress has told the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to try again.
A skin manifestation can be a pediatrician’s first clue that a patient is being abused. Up to 90% of physical abuse victims present with cutaneous findings, such as bruises, lacerations, abrasions, burns, oral trauma, bite marks, and traumatic alopecia.
Of 32 neonates who died suddenly at a hospital in the United Kingdom and whose deaths remained unexplained after a thorough postmortem, 12 (37.5%) were born to mothers with a history of methadone use or use of drugs of addiction during pregnancy.
