Parents always face this dilemma: “half a teaspoon” or “one tablespoon” of medicine for their child. But it’s fairly obvious that spoons now come in all shapes and sizes, so perhaps your child isn’t getting the correct dose. Now, a new study shows that there is a lot of variability in those spoons, enough so that parents should invest a couple dollars in a measured dropper instead. In the study, first printed in the Annals of Internal Medicine and reviewed in Pediatrics JournalWatch, patients tried to pour 5ml into a series of spoons. They found a 20% error in under/overdosing. While that not seem like a lot, cumulatively it can cause issues, especially with excess Tylenol doses or too much codeine or pseudoephedrine in cough syrups. As they mention in their commentary: …Continue reading: Kids & Medicines: Throw Away The Kitchen Spoons…
|
|||||
|
Food allergies in children, as a diagnosis, are more common than before. But are we over-diagnosing? The main issue is that the tests we perform, especially the blood tests for allergens, may show a positive “in vitro” allergy but “in vivo”, AKA in real life, there may not be a clinically significant allergy. …Continue reading: Food Allergy in Kids: Are We Over-Diagnosing?…
One of most popular posts last year was a slide show on air pollution in China. Now, I have created a trimmed-down version that I’ve started to give to high school classes. This slide show is now available below for teachers and parents to use all over China (I hope!). You don’t even need to download; simply click on the “FULL” icon on the lower right section and it will present full screen. There are two links to short videos, as well as a final link to a fun and educational air pollution game from the U.S. EPA. It’s geared more for teens, but it’s also a quick way for adults to understand the basics. …Continue reading: Air Pollution in China: New Slideshow For Schools & Parents…
Many parents have been concerned about the alleged links between the MMR vaccine and a possible link to autism. As I’ve mentioned before, all medical societies continue to state that there has never been convincing proof of this, and now there is even less. The esteemed medical journal Lancet, which started this whole issue in 1998 with a provocative study, now officially and fully retracts that earlier study. Discussed here on BBC News, this is a major retraction and hopefully will finally put to rest this issue. The retraction comes a week after Dr Andrew Wakefield, the lead researcher in the 1998 paper, was ruled last week to have broken research rules by the General Medical Council. There was apparently a major conflict of interest: …Continue reading: MMR Vaccine & Autism: Famous Study Now Retracted… The following is a first post from a guest contributor, Dr Nathanael Goldman. He is a pediatrician at Beijing’s United Family Hospital and also runs his own website, kidschina.org.
|
|
||||
|
Powered by WordPress & the Atahualpa Theme by BytesForAll. Discuss on our WP Forum |
|||||
Every once in a while, children and adults feel a lot of pressure or pain in their ears, and thick wax clogs their ear canal and needs to be removed. Doctors can try to scoop or rinse it out, but many over-the-counter drops can soften it up. But which one works best? This was reviewed by the Cochrane group, the world’s leading reviewer of evidence-based medicine. Their perhaps unsurprising finding was that none of the major drops worked much better than the other; even water-based or saline-based drops worked. However, they weren’t too happy with the overall quality of the studies they reviewed in their literature search. Here’s their “plain language summary” from their review (
.jpg)
People may not realize that there have been amazing advances in technology that can help deaf children hear again. It’s called a cochlear implant, a surgical implant that amplifies sound waves directly into a child’s brain — and allows them to hear again. 
It’s a bit, um, difficult to make air pollution a cool subject for kids. Even my recent 
During the winter many more children come to the consultation with skin complaints than during warmer months. Something in then happening during the winter, which may be the cold itself and air dryness. 
This site complies with the 
Recent Comments
September 7, 2010 () “Air Conditioning Disease”? It\'s an interesting idea, but then we could ap...
September 7, 2010 () “Air Conditioning Disease”? I kinda of believe in the so-called "air-c...
September 7, 2010 () Does Diet Really Affect Acne? I am very interested in the paper and its resul...