News

Children and the federal budget, FDA woes, and a call to standardize CAM

Your awaited transfer from a small community hospital has finally arrived at the end of the day: a 14-month-old boy with persistent poor feeding and a need for intravenous fluids to maintain hydration.

How can child abductions be averted? Should pediatricians accept some responsibility for preventing them?

Part of the care you give is helping parents create a safe, hazard-free environment for their children by discussing a variety of age-appropriate topics at health-maintenance visits. Yet, despite attention given by the national press to the threat of child abduction in recent years, little discussion has taken place about the role pediatricians can play in preventing abduction, as well as in facilitating retrieval of children who are taken. That's surprising, considering the traditional role we have assumed for children and their families.

What you see on the outside can provide valuable clues that all is not well on the inside. Here are some important signs to watch for.

In telling their story, children's books often paint vivid pictures of human emotions. Some single out happiness, anger, or depression, to name a few, as their obvious focus; others weave together these and other feelings to enhance the tales they tell.

Music, carefully selected, may reduce stress, enhance relaxation, offer distraction from pain, and even improve cognitive performance. So, should you be prescribing tunes for tots?

A Monday morning in September has come galloping in after a relatively quiet weekend, bringing with it to your office a 17-year-old Caucasian boy for evaluation of a developing rash on his hands and feet.

Lighten the winter doldrums with a selection of tried-and-true ideas to use in your practice—including a CLIA-waived test for detecting alien life!

Too often, confusion clouds the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in pediatric patients. To help ensure that these children get the treatment they desperately need, pediatricians must understand the unique way that this illness manifests in the young.