News

President asks pediatricians' help at AAP meeting, DeAngelis takes over at JAMA, Infectious diseases, old and new, how much do you know about inhalant abuse?

Alternative therapies seem to thrive where mainstream medicine is most challenged. The focus here is on herbs and supplements used to treat childhood cancers?why they're used, what families hope for from them, and how the evidence stacks up.

Pediatricians know a lot about both the benefits and the detrimental effects of television, co-sleeping, and peanuts. It's tempting to try to synthesize that information into sweeping, apparently simple recommendations. When we do that without real evidence, however, we risk our own credibility and that of all those who have worked so hard to investigate the means by which we can make real improvements in the lives of children.

Knowing what signs and symptoms suggest intracranial pathology can help pediatricians approach the diagnosis of a brain tumor quickly and with confidence. As primary care physicians, they also play a key role in long-term management.

As the day-care population grows, so does the need to protect both children and staff from infectious diseases. This concise overview summarizes how different infections spread, who's at risk, and the policies and procedures needed to control infection without excluding children from day care unnecessarily.

When you turn to a consultant for help in a complex case, are you sometimes sorry you asked? This primer shows how to make consultations more productive by checking out a specialist's credentials, asking well-defined questions, and resisting intimidation.

While infant abductions are rare, a few occur every year. Pediatricians should be aware of preventive steps to take in hospitals and how to educate parents in the art of protecting their newborns.

Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis are not confined to the gastrointestinal tract. Growth failure, painful joints, and oral or skin lesions are just a few of the nonintestinal signs and symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease that can help you make a diagnosis-- sometimes even before GI problems appear.

When a child falls hard on an outstretched hand, something in the elbow may stretch or break. Elbow away confusion about these injuries by boning up on the most common problems and how to manage them.

Much ado about vaccines, Recalls, AIDS and the world's children, Emergency contraception: Still hard to get, Teenagers' drugs of choice; Eye on Washington

Resistance is only one reason acute otitis media may fail to respond to a first course of amoxicillin. In deciding what to do next, you'll need to take the other possibilities into account as well.

The recent advent of "intensive" management has improved the outlook for patients with type 1 diabetes. Its success in children and teens depends on control of hypoglycemia and well-coordinated support from specialists and the primary care pediatrician.

The new world of managed care has brought at least one good idea: We should try to find out if the things we do, particularly the things that cost money, really make a difference in the lives of our patients.

A 3-month-old girl is brought to your office with diarrhea, poor weight gain, and hair loss. She was thriving until a month ago, when her parents said she became chronically irritable and developed loose stools and a scaly rash on her face and in the diaper area.

The public (that is, the parents of our patients) has begun to take the prevention and quick treatment of infectious diseases for granted. Recent events, however, have demonstrated that we cannot rest comfortably on past successes, and we cannot allow people to be poorly informed.

A thorough but speedy evaluation is essential when examining a child with possible appendicitis. In ambiguous cases, CT--especially when performed with rectal contrast--is an excellent adjudicator.

As more and more kids participate in recreational and competitive sports, pediatricians must be able to recognize and treat infectious diseases that commonly plague athletes and to make sound decisions about when athletes may resume play.