News

In November 2004, the British government announced a comprehensive campaign to address major health threats to the country's population. Their efforts raise a question: Where does the role of the physician stop and the responsibility of society begin?

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It's morning on an unseasonably warm Tuesday in February. As you walk across campus from grand rounds, a page from the pediatric emergency department signals that a patient is waiting to be admitted. Off you go!

This has been an exciting year for medical office technology. Improvements in otoscopy, hemoglobin analyzers, tissue adhesives, and topical skin preps top the list of innovations.

Most adolescents who commit suicide saw a physician in the weeks or months before death. You can play a key role in preventing such tragedy by recognizing predisposing signs and symptoms and collaborating with mental health professionals to help vulnerable patients.

The parents of a 2-year-old girl mentioned that once or twice a day over the last few months, when she gets tired, she crosses her legs and leans over as if she has abdominal pain.

If laughter is the best medicine, clowning is one way to make a sick child feel better. Could you conga to the beeping of an IV pump and be a clown doctor, Doctor?

Every year, no matter how many times I consult the dosing chart for inactivated influenza vaccine, I still find myself forgetting when to give 0.25 mL (cc) vs. 0.5 mL (cc) and when to give two doses.

Each year in November, December, and January our office is inundated with calendars from pharmaceutical companies. I collect them and give them out to my asthma patients.

Letters from readers

Safer drugs, childhood obesity, and a plan to deliver flu vaccine this season

A toddler likes to wind her hair around her thumb and then suck her thumb.

Disorders associated with international adoptions include fetal alcohol syndrome and ADHD. What type of physician would you recommend for evaluation of a child adopted internationally?

Frank A. Oski, Walter W. Tunnessen, and Catherine Caldwell Brown are remembered by a colleague for their inestimable contribution to this publication.

Because families will call on their child's pediatrician to interpret the results of expanded neonatal screening, it is important to consider the implications of these programs.

Pediatricians have an obligation to aid children and adolescents who are exposed to family alcohol or other drug abuse or dependence. Asking the right questions, showing empathy, and guiding patients and families to available resources are the keys to motivating change.

How you talk to and play with your young child can make a big difference in her language ability, even if she has already been referred for evaluation or therapy because of the pediatrician’s concerns about late talking. Here are some recommendations for promoting development of speech.

This has been a contentious and generally unproductive session of Congress, with little major legislation passed, authorization bills still incomplete, and much attention paid to pushing potentially awkward votes on such issues as keeping the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and reinstating the military draft. Some $145 billion worth of tax cuts sought by President George W. Bush were enacted—without alternative sources of revenue identified. Legislation that would legalize reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada failed to get a hearing.

Once more, the United States doesn't have enough of a vaccine—this time, flu vaccine. Just as the influenza season was about to start, the bad news hit the headlines: The entire output of the California-based Chiron company's influenza vaccine has been condemned by the authorities in the United Kingdom, where Chiron's vaccine, Fluvinir, is manufactured. US authorities had counted on 100 million doses of flu vaccine this year—up from 87 million available last year. About half that amount was to be supplied by Chiron.

You remain concerned that he has a serious problem. Might he have one of the more common diagnoses in a 2-year-old who refuses to walk?

Collecting stool specimens from an infant who has diarrhea is difficult, especially if the stool is watery and soaks into the diaper before it can be collected.

These suggestions are something you can give to patients who seems at first glance to need very little.

Your young patients are more likely to survive to very old age than did previous generations. Will they flourish as senior citizens or be limited by illness and disability? In large measure, that depends on whether their families put into practice the advice you give—advice that comes out of an expanding body of remarkable, illuminating research.