Idea #320 for January 4th, 2010: Measuring Up or The Importance of Properly Measuring Liquid Medications

When measuring out a dose of liquid medication, is a kitchen spoon a good enough utensil? Pouring a spoonful of cough medicine may seem like a harmless estimation, but research shows that this practice is unnecessarily dangerous. Not all spoons are created equal, so a teaspoon of medicine may fill each kitchen spoon differently. A study showed that people attempting to measure out a certain volume of liquid medicine in kitchen spoons of various sizes were off by an average of about 10%.

Administering a mis-measured dose of medicine to a child could have dire consequences. The best way to avoid mistakes is to use measuring caps or dosing spoons that were provided along with the medication. The few seconds you might save by eyeballing the liquid in a kitchen spoon is not worth the potential risk of over-medicating a child.

Read more about this issue here.

Idea #301 for December 16th, 2009: Bad Break or Easy Way To Prevent Playground Injuries

Playground accidents account for about 200,000 injuries a year in school children. Those numbers suggest maybe we should start ripping down jungle gyms and other potentially hazardous equipment. But there’s another solution that could cut down on injuries without spoiling all the fun for kids. Simply replacing the playground surfaces — which is often wood fiber based — with sand can have a big effect.

The surfaces made from wood fibers don’t have as much “give” as ones made from sand, so kids are an estimated five-times as likely to break a limb when falling on those surfaces compared to sand. So replacing wood fiber surfaces with sand in playgrounds could significantly reduce broken limbs while still allowing children access to the physical activity many of them need.

Read more about this study here.

Idea #300 for December 15th, 2009: Teach Your Children Well or Teaching School Children To Recognize Stroke Symptoms In Adults

Being able to spot the first signs of an impending stroke is key to ensuring rapid treatment and optimal prognosis. But placing the onus entirely on the stroke victim to recognize his own symptoms may be the wrong approach. That’s why a group in Texas began a program to teach children to recognize and respond to potential stroke symptoms observed in others.

A group of several hundred middle-schoolers was selected to receive four lessons per year on stroke awareness throughout grades 6 to 8. Their stroke knowledge was test prior to and during the program. After the first year, the group scored significantly better on their test than the control group. While it remains to be seen whether the study group will put their knowledge to use and save lives down the line, the program holds promise. With only a handful of lessons per year, these kids may be adept at recognizing oncoming strokes in older populations.

Read more about this here.

Idea #298 for December 13th, 2009: Shaping Young Minds or Many Children Forgo Treatment For Mental Health Conditions

A report from the National Institute of Mental Health claims that only 55% of children with mental health problems actually seek treatment. That number represents an increase over the previous year, but it is still surprisingly low. The researchers determined that 13% of the children aged 8-15 they surveyed suffered from depression, ADHD, anxiety, or a conduct disorder, but only about half sought treatment.

The incidence of these adolescent mental health conditions varied across different socio-economic groups, the study found. Most of the disorders were more prevalent in poorer populations. Anxiety conditions, though, occurred more frequently in populations of higher socio-economic status. African American and Mexican American children were the least likely to seek treatment for their mental health issues. If we want to continue to make progress in treating adolescent mental health, we’re going to have to remove any stigma attached to these disorders as well as make treatment more widely available.

Read more about this issue here.

Idea #289 for December 4th, 2009: Playing With Fire or FDA Looking At Side Effects of Antipsychotic Drugs on Children

A group of drugs called atypical antipsychotics are widely used to treat a number of psychiatric conditions including schizophrenia and depression. They are sometimes prescribed to children, but the FDA is now asking for further study on the matter. Research has shown that children who take these drugs are at increased risk of experiencing adverse metabolic side effects.

Metabolic side effects include problems like weight gain, high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol. There is also the larger debate regarding these medications and whether young children should be given powerful antipsychotic drugs in the first place. Increasingly, children are being prescribed these drugs for unapproved uses, like for treating ADHD, without knowing the long-term effects they may have. The FDA should take a good look at how these drugs are prescribed, their side effects, and whether the benefits outweigh the mounting negatives associated with them.

Read more about this issue here.

Idea #262 for November 7th, 2009: Left Out in The Cold or The Importance Of Medical Insurance For Children

With the direction of healthcare legislation still being fought over in Congress, one thing remains clear. Children in the US who do not have medical insurance coverage are at a disadvantage when it comes to quality of healthcare. Uninsured children with trauma injuries are three times as likely to die than children who do have insurance. This setup is inherently unjust, and Congress must take steps to rectify this problem for their legislation to be considered successful.

Researchers have a few hypotheses as to why uninsured children are much more likely to die from trauma. Without insurance, trauma patients are sometimes transferred from one hospital to another, which eats up valuable time that could be used to treat them. Also, fewer diagnostic tests may be ordered for un- or under-insured children, which can prevent an accurate diagnosis from being quickly ascertained. No matter the true reasons behind it, the statistic itself is alarming. The American public may have objections to universal healthcare, but those objections should end when it comes down to coverage for children — a population that has no control over whether or not it has healthcare insurance.

Read more about this statistic in the news here.

Idea #251 for October 27th, 2009: Step Into The Light or Fixing Vitamin D Deficiency in Children

Many American children are lacking in sufficient levels of one vitamin in particular: vitamin D. The main source of that vitamin comes not from ingestion, but from exposure to sunlight, which plays a key step in vitamin D synthesis in cells. Guidelines recommend that children have levels of vitamin D of at least 50 nmol/L. But a study found that about 1 in 5 kids — 6 million total — had levels below that mark. More than two-thirds of children have levels below 75 nmol/L, which is the level recommended for adults.

Since darker skin pigmentation makes absorption of sunlight more difficult, and thus synthesis of vitamin D less efficient, it’s not surprising that African-American children are much more likely to be deficient in vitamin D than white children. Children in the study who took multivitamins had higher levels of vitamin D, but less than half of kids actually take multivitamins. In many parts of the country, sunlight during the winter months is inadequate to produce vitamin D at sufficient levels. Plus, that particular vitamin does not occur naturally in a lot of common foods, so it’s hard to get it from other sources.

How can children get their needed vitamin D then? Some suggest that foods should be fortified with the vitamin to make it available to the entire public. The problem with that is, with some people already getting sufficient levels of the vitamin, adding into the food supply might be overkill. The best approach is probably encouraging the use of supplements. That way, kids don’t have to worry about too much sun exposure either, which can of course lead to skin cancer. But if we do nothing about this problem, we might see an increase in the health effects associated with not enough vitamin D intake.

Read more about this study in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Idea #248 for October 24th, 2009: Going Under or Damaging Effects of General Anesthesia on Young Brains

We can all agree that the advent of general anesthesia was one of the greatest steps forward in medicine. There’s growing evidence, though, that its use in young children can have some serious effects on their developing neurological systems. It’s thought that the calcium-blocking effects of general anesthetics can kill off neurons in the brains of children under two, affecting their cognitive abilities. Young children in that age range have brains undergoing neurological changes that make them especially susceptible to that side-effect of anesthesia. At the same time, elderly populations appear to be more likely to suffer symptoms of dementia following general anesthesia.

This news certainly doesn’t mean that children should forgo general anesthesia during operations. It does reinforce the idea, however, that general anesthesia should only be used when necessary with young kids, but you can pretty much be sure that’s what is happening now anyway. Evidence shows that undergoing surgery without anesthesia is not only painful, but actually quite dangerous because of stress responses to pain in the body. So the solution to this problem might mean developing new anesthetics in the future that do not disrupt calcium in brain cells. Until then, we will have to live with the potentially damaging side-effects that these very necessary drugs come with.

Read more about this in Time Magazine.

 

Idea #246 for October 22nd, 2009: Party’s Over or Knowingly Infecting Kids With Swine Flu = Bad Idea

With the threat of H1N1 looming, some parents are considering organizing swine flu “parties” where kids would be intentionally exposed to the virus, along the lines of chicken pox parties. The thinking is that infecting the kids now will give them immunity to swine flu before it mutates into something more harmful. However, this mindset is wrong and potentially dangerous. Healthcare professionals are urging parents not to be involved with swine flu parties.

For one, there’s no evidence to support the claim that the virus will mutate into anything much more virulent than it is today. More importantly, willingly subjecting people — especially young people — to swine flu is dangerous. Whereas seasonal flu deaths occur mostly among elderly populations, swine flu is hitting younger people hard. About a quarter of the deaths so far from H1N1 in the US have been people under 25 years old.

Also, there are complications that can arise from swine flu. Acquiring swine flu might mean getting pneumonia or other conditions down the line that will make things even more dangerous. Further, intentionally giving your child swine flu means that child is contagious and capable of spreading the virus to many other non-willing participants, and exposing them to the risks of complications. In all, swine flu parties are a terrible idea and could pose a serious public health threat.

Read more about this issue here.

Idea #241 for October 17th, 2009: Playing Fair or Disparities in Children ER Visits For Chest Pain

A study in a Cincinnati hospital found a disparity in treatment along racial lines when children are admitted for chest pain. The data come from over 800 ER visits by children over several years at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Researchers found that black children were less likely to receive tests following complaints of chest pain than white children. Similarly, children without private insurance were less likely to receive tests.

The study showed that 71% of white children admitted were given either an EKG, chest X-ray, or CBC as follow-up tests, while only 59% of black children were given the same tests. Also, 75% of children on private insurance received one of those tests, but only 59% of children on public insurance like Medicaid got the same. The data certainly suggest something is amiss. It should also be pointed out that the number of tests ordered is not indicative of the quality of care given, and other factors may be at play too. However, if there is a race or class element to this, it is something that will have to be addressed not only in this Cincinnati hospital, but everywhere else it exists too.

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/10/16/race-insurance-may-affect-testing-of-kids-in-er.html