Scoliosis – typically defined as the curvature of the spine— affects around 3 out of every 100 people. While most cases of scoliosis are mild, some children develop spine deformities that continue to get more severe as they grow. An especially severe spinal curve can reduce the amount of space within the chest, making it difficult for the lungs to function properly.
As new scientific discoveries deepen our understanding of how cancer develops in children, doctors and other healthcare providers face challenges in better using that knowledge to guide treatment and counsel families and patients. In addition, as more children continue to survive pediatric cancer, that counseling may extend into a patient’s adulthood and old age.
A new 3D computer modeling system may significantly improve a surgeon's ability to select the best sized donor heart for children receiving heart transplants, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2015.
Surgeons at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) joined with colleagues from Penn Medicine recently to complete the world’s first bilateral hand transplant on a child. Earlier this month, the surgical team successfully transplanted donor hands and forearms onto eight-year-old Zion Harvey who, several years earlier, had undergone amputation of his hands and feet and a kidney…
This year, the worldwide International Day of Radiology (IDoR) on 8 November is dedicated to paediatric radiology. Professor Erich Sorantin, Head of Paediatric Radiology at the University Hospital Graz (Austria) and IDoR coordinator for Austria is particularly pleased: “Only very few countries recognize paediatric radiology as a radiological sub-speciality. Now we have the opportunity to…
First-of-its-kind study by the University of Iowa shows kids with hearing loss benefit from early intervention.
Hearing loss is one of the most common birth defects, with more than 12,000 children in the United States affected each year. Three students in Wichita State University's biomedical engineering program recognized this issue and designed their senior project to create a therapeutic toy to provide early intervention therapy for children with auditory disabilities.
Bacteria aren’t the only nonhuman invaders to colonize the gut shortly after a baby’s birth. Viruses also set up house there, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. All together, these invisible residents are thought to play important roles in human health.
The survival rate of premature babies born between 26 to 31 weeks of gestation is improved by blocking light from reaching the intravenously-fed infused nutritious mixture they depend on for survival, researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine and the University of Montreal have revealed in a new study.
Premature births are intimately linked with inflammation of the uterine tissue, a biological response which induces contractions and preterm labor. In their search for a mean to prevent this phenomenon and complications related to deliveries occurring before 37 weeks of gestation, researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine and University of Montreal discovered an agent that shows efficacy in inhibiting…
Twin girls born joined at the pelvic and hip region are recovering after separation surgery at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The girls are named Acen and Apio, but on Thursday they were carefully labeled “blue” and “red” to help surgeons know which monitoring equipment belonged to each sister as they carefully separated their spines, muscle and tissue.
Fetuses with enlarged ventricles--the fluid-filled cavities inside the brain--may be less likely than their counterparts to benefit from surgery in the womb to treat spina bifida, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden have discovered a new explanation for severe early infant epilepsy. Mutations in the gene encoding the protein KCC2 can cause the disease, hereby confirming an earlier theory. The findings are being published in the journal Nature Communications.
Children with broken bones or joint dislocations in northern Israel emergency departments received equal pain treatment, regardless of their ethnicity or the ethnicity of the nurses who treated them, even during a period of armed conflict between the two ethnic groups.
Looking at measurements of the vertebrae – the series of small bones that make up the spinal column – in newborn children, investigators at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles found that differences between the sexes are present at birth. Results of the study in the August issue of the Journal of Pediatrics, suggest that this difference is evolutionary, allowing the female spine to adapt to the…
Doctors and researchers have long known that children who are missing about 60 genes on a certain chromosome are at a significantly elevated risk for developing either a disorder on the autism spectrum or psychosis — that is, any mental disorder characterized by delusions and hallucinations, including schizophrenia. But there has been no way to predict which child with the abnormality might be…
Johanna Olson, MD, and her colleagues at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, provide care for the largest number of transyouth in the U.S. and have enrolled 101 patients in a study to determine the safety and efficacy of treatment that helps patients bring their bodies into closer alignment with their gender of identity.
Taking antibiotics may increase the risk that a child will develop juvenile arthritis, according to a study from Rutgers University, University of Pennsylvania and Nemours A.I. duPont Hospital for Children published today in Pediatrics.
Brain lesions in children can be especially challenging to diagnose, according to a report in the journal Frontiers in Neurology by a multidisciplinary team of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine physicians. Lesions include tumors, abnormal blood vessel formations, and abscesses and inflammation due to infections.
In The BMJ this week, two doctors criticise Australia for passing legislation that may be used to silence doctors working with asylum seekers.
DITTA, the Global Diagnostic Imaging, Healthcare IT and Radiation Therapy Trade Association is, for the first time, attending the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Sixty‐Eighth World Health Assembly (WHA) from 18-26 May 2015 since DITTA granted the status of NGO in official relationship with WHO.
During the transition from child to adult many teens with chronic diseases somehow slip through the healthcare cracks between paediatric and adult medicine. Compliance deteriorates, regular check-ups are missed – an international problem, as many studies indicate. A promising programme, launched in Berlin, helps teens to manage this difficult change. Report: Bettina Döbereiner
Parents’ lifestyles, rather than their genes, are primarily responsible for their children being overweight according to research by the Centre for Economic Performance, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Researchers compared the weight of biological and adopted children to that of their parents to determine whether children inherit their weight problems or…
The very first successful organ donation from a newborn to be carried out in the UK is reported in the Fetal & Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood. The donor was a girl born at term after an emergency caesarean section in the neonatal unit of Hammersmith Hospital, London. The donation involved the kidneys, which were transplanted into a patient with renal failure, and liver…
Challenging the long-standing belief that city dwellers suffer disproportionately from asthma, the results of a new Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study of more than 23,000 U.S. children reveal that income, race and ethnic origin may play far more potent roles in asthma risk than kids’ physical surroundings.