News

A study in more than 200 boys and girls undermines the common belief that a lack of physical activity leads to childhood obesity.

With the ability to more accurately diagnose acute injuries in the emergency department, it is no wonder that the use of computed tomography scanning has increased over the past decades.

The author recalls the first time she ordered a CT scan in the mid-1970s.

The emergency department pages you about a 1-month-old girl recently transferred from an outside hospital for further evaluation of swelling over her posterior scalp.

Pediatricians have become avid users of smartphone and tablet technology in their personal and professional lives. With many more apps to come, find here our picks for the most useful of the current batch.

Investigators designed a study to enhance understanding of the cis-regulatory sequences of the ?-globin locus required for silencing or activation of fetal hemoglobin.

Proton pump inhibitors often are prescribed to treat infants with symptoms suspected as gastroesophageal reflux disease, but these acid-suppressing drugs are not safe for infants younger than 12 months.

Tooth eruption has been held responsible for irritability, increased salivation, sleep disturbance, fever, diarrhea, and loss of appetite.

A new American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement advocates that substance abuse education and screening be included as routine components of adolescent care.

The worried mother of a healthy 21-month-old girl asks you to evaluate a peculiar, squiggly blue line on the top of her daughter's right foot.

New clinical practice guidelines issued by the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Infectious Diseases Society of America provide detailed recommendations for prevention, diagnosis, and management of community-acquired pneumonia in otherwise healthy infants and children in the outpatient or inpatient setting.

According to two trials, suppressive oral acyclovir therapy for 6 months improved neurodevelopment outcomes in infants surviving HSV disease with CNS involvement.

A 2-year-old girl has been followed for developmental delays and slow weight gain by her pediatrician and early childhood intervention therapists. The 17-year-old, first-time mother was also a runaway and had avoided early prenatal care. More details and questions for you, here.

Knowledge of a child’s birth weight can be a valuable tool when determining whether to screen for autism spectrum disorder. Patients who weigh less than 2,000 g at birth are 5 times more likely to have autism than the general population. How much does the autism incidence increase with a history of very low birth weight (less than 1,500 g)?

Children in the 85th percentile for body mass index (BMI) are at greatly elevated risk for high blood pressure and require regular monitoring as well as possible interventions, according to a new American Heart Association study. The study of 1,111 healthy Indiana school children found that the adiposity effect on blood pressure was minimal until patients reached the overweight category, when it increased 4-fold. Find out why researchers believe the hormone leptin may play a role in the relationship between weight and blood pressure.

Instead of too little, too late, in terms of medical care, are your patients getting too much, too soon? Pediatricians and other primary care physicians overtreat patients at a cost of $6.7 billion a year. Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, attributed the costs to performing unnecessary tests or prescribing unneeded medications. Can you guess in what areas pediatricians most contributed to the problem?

What if you could accurately assess risk for alcohol-related problems with just 2 straightforward questions? Here’s a new government-sponsored tool, developed in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics, that has been shown to have the greatest accuracy in predicting current or future alcohol issues in young people.

Social phobia is not just an extreme form of shyness in most teenagers, and it often requires referral and/or intervention from a pediatrician, according to recent research. In a recent study, 12% of teens who identified themselves as shy met the criteria for social phobia, and another 5% of those who did not consider themselves shy also met the diagnostic criteria. You may be surprised to discover how rare it is for adolescents with social phobia, even those with significant impairment, to receive treatment.

Evaluations for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should begin in children at 4 years and continue until 18 years, which significantly expands the age range for recommended screening. Released at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, the clinical practice guidelines recommend behavioral interventions as the first-line treatment in preschool children. The guidelines also have some new suggestions related to methylphenidate treatment for children younger than 6 years.

The AAP has just released updated guidelines on ADHD that include the recommendation for medication therapy for selected preschoolers (as young as 4 years old).

Most US teenagers are sleep deprived-nearly 70% do not get 8 or more hours of sleep a night. Now, new research suggests that the implications of that may be more significant than simply parents being kept awake by late-night tapping on mobile phones or even by groggy teens nodding off in class. What did a study in mice find out about how short-term sleep restriction can affect the balance between growth and depletion of brain synapses?

Pediatricians commonly get the panicked call or visit from parents who have witnessed a febrile seizure and are convinced their child’s illness has taken a turn for the worse. Here’s something that can help calm them down: Febrile seizures appear to have more to do with hyperventilation than the severity of the illness. Why do researchers believe that, and what illnesses are more and less likely to set off seizures in young children?

A potential new weapon against acute asthma is readily available and inexpensive and has few adverse effects if taken in the correct dosage. Pediatricians could soon be adding vitamin D supplementation to their asthma-fighting arsenals. Find out why researchers believe vitamin supplementation can be effective in treating severe, therapy-resistant asthma.

At a time when 18 states are seeking to eliminate Medicaid coverage for circumcision of newborn males and at least 1 city sought to ban the practice, an editorial published in a leading medical journal says that such efforts are wrongheaded and that more should be done to promote the procedure. The authors maintain that hundreds of studies in the last 5 years document the benefits of circumcision. What did those studies find, and should neutral pediatric guidelines be changed?

Addressing health issues affecting your obese patients now instead of waiting until they develop medical conditions later can help save $3 billion in US health costs a year. But you have to be careful how you discuss children’s obesity issues with their parents. What are the terms most likely to be accepted, understood, and acted on?

Now more than ever you are on the front lines in the battle to get children immunized against dangerous diseases. More than 1 in 8 parents have adopted an alternative vaccination schedule for their children, with almost twice that number saying they do not believe the government’s recommended schedule is the best one to follow. You might be shocked to find out how dramatically risk increases when even 1 scheduled vaccine is skipped.

Advertising InformationClick here to view our Media Kit Brett Baxter, Director of Digital Business DevelopmentBrett.Baxter@UBM.com or call 201-984-6271.

Deepak Kamat MD, PhDProfessor of Pediatrics Wayne State University Vice Chair of Education The Carman and Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics Children's Hospital of Michigan Detroit, Michigan