News

The rapidly growing field of Minimal Access Surgery : Benefits for infants and children Dermcase : Itchy, red rash plagues teenager Puzzler : Liberian immigrant girl with difficult breathing and altered mental status Updates : Chronic kidney disease, OCD cues in children, Lyme Meningitis, FDA on Rapid Influenza Test, CVD risk factors in overweight children, ADHD

A frustrated teenage girl comes to your office complaining of an itchy, red rash on her right calf that she's had for 3 months.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new mobile imaging device that aids in the detection of life-threatening bleeding in the skull through near-infrared spectroscopy.

A randomized trial of ivacaftor, a potentiator of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator protein, in patients with CF demonstrated that its use is not only associated with improvements in lung function but also with improvements in the risk of pulmonary exacerbations, respiratory symptoms, weight, and concentration of sweat chloride.

Keeping critically ill children with weakened hearts alive until a donor heart can be found appears more hopeful with US Food and Drug Administration approval of a cardiac-assist device specifically designed for children from newborns to adolescents.

An analysis of the cardiovascular safety of drugs used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in a population of more than 1.2 million children and young adults from 4 geographically diverse health plans with more than 2.5 million person years of follow-up found no evidence that these drugs increase the risk of serious cardiovascular events.

Pediatric surgeons

According to the American College of Surgeons Health Policy Research Institute, in 2006, only 12.8% of counties in the United States had a single pediatric surgeon of any type, and only a little more than half of those counties had a pediatric general surgeon.

Managing a patient with a medical emergency while on a commercial airline flight can be a challenge.

The first rapid influenza testing system that provides a digital readout of test results for 7 strains of influenza A and B has been given 501(k) clearance and a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments waiver by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Minimal access surgery is the fastest-growing area of surgical innovation, and children certainly benefit from procedures previously associated with more invasive approaches.

The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics told a Senate committee that childhood trauma, including abuse and neglect, might be the leading cause of poor health among US adults.

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A 3-year-old child was brought to her primary caregiver by her maternal grandmother who was concerned about the infected lesion shown here. The child was at the center of a heated custody dispute and abuse was strongly suspected. But could the lesion’s origin be something else?

Disordered eating in boys : Beyond the 3 classifications in the DSM-IV Our Picks : Best new tech products Dermcase : Circular, scabby lesions in infant Puzzler : Agitation, seizures spell trouble for preteen boy Updates : Pneumococcal Vaccine, Oral Antiepileptics, Cholesterol Screening, Origins of Autism, Recurrent PID

Here’s a way to help your female teenagers avoid athletic injuries: During their sports physicals, tell them and their parents that coach-led neuromuscular warm-ups have been shown to reduce anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and other leg injuries in teen girls who play soccer and basketball. Find out what a dramatic difference warm-ups made and how cost-effective they are.

Using a simple, nonfasting blood test to screen children for diabetes may be too good to be true. A new study found that hemoglobin A1c is not very effective for diagnosing diabetes in children and misses as many as 2 out of 3 cases. What tests did the researchers recommend instead?

Although current clinical guidelines call for daily low-dose inhaled corticosteroid treatment for preschoolers who have recurrent wheezing and are at risk for developing asthma, that may not be the best course of action. You might be surprised at how few times a year treatment was necessary for respiratory symptoms that had caused wheezing in the past.

With 10 cases this year of swine-origin influenza reported, mostly in children, the CDC is urging pediatricians to screen patients presenting with fever and respiratory symptoms for contact with swine. It also said you shouldn’t rely on commercially available diagnostic tests to tell the difference between swine flu and seasonal influenza A viruses. Here’s why.