Archives of Disease in Childhood articles from February 2004

Archives of Disease in Childhood archives from February 2004

The early life origins of asthma and related allergic disorders; a focus on the way the disease evolves in early life.(Asthma)
February 1, 2004... Pharmacological treatment of established asthma is highly effective in controlling symptoms and improving quality of life. However, no treatment has been hitherto shown to modify the natural course of the disease and no cure has been...

Playground injuries to children: play value, safety, or both.(Injury)
February 1, 2004... Play for children has never been more important, particularly as we now know how vital exercise is in promoting health and preventing obesity, both in childhood and also into adult life. Play is also important in establishing social patterns of...

Referral and access to children's health services; a single point of entry model.(Health Services)
February 1, 2004... The Children's National Service Framework has identified access as a core theme and aims to develop standards to ensure better access and smoother progression in the provision of services. (1) The need for better coordination was highlighted by...

Paediatrics in primary care; a new series.(Primary Care Paediatrics and Child Health)
February 1, 2004... Increasingly the future organisation of paediatrics at secondary level, the place of first referral, depends greatly on the organisation and quality of care at primary level. The ability of paediatricians to influence primary child health care...

Out of hours care; a personal view.(Primary Care Paediatrics and Child Health)
February 1, 2004... It is now just over 25 years since Donald Court reviewed paediatric services in the UK. The only major recommendation that was not eventually implemented was the concept of a general practitioner paediatrician (GPP). (1) Court recognised the...

The future of primary care paediatrics and child health; patterns, trends, and influences in child health.(Primary Care Paediatrics and Child Health)
February 1, 2004... I don't anticipate tomorrow's children will be very different from today's. More extreme pre-term survivors, maybe; growing taller perhaps, and certainly more likely to be obese, these children are likely to be subjected to ever increasing...

The future for child healthcare provision within general practice; children's health remains an integral element of general practice.(Primary Care Paediatrics and Child Health)
February 1, 2004... In common with other healthcare services in the United Kingdom, general practice (GP) is faced with an ever increasing pace of change which is best highlighted by the implementation and implications of the new GP (General Medical Services, GMS)...

Who should provide primary care for children? "primary health care is essential health care ... made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community ... It is the first level of contact of individuals ... with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work, and constitutes the first element of a continuing health care process". (1).(Primary Care Paediatrics and Child Health)
February 1, 2004... Traditionally, UK general practitioners (GPs) have provided primary care for all age groups. However, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) has recently proposed that paediatricians should take on primary care for children....

Nurse practitioners: role in acute paediatric care.(Primary Care Paediatrics and Child Health)
February 1, 2004... This paper proposes that community based nurse practitioners are well placed to provide care to acutely ill children. The data provided from a nurse led primary care service in Newcastle upon Tyne illustrate that 98% of children presenting with...

The future of paediatric primary care and child health; child care teams are well placed to deliver needs led primary care paediatrics.(Primary Care Paediatrics and Child Health)
February 1, 2004... The central objective of paediatric primary care (PPC) should be the integration of preventative and curative health services. Delivering this objective will not be simple or the same in different health districts, but it would achieve a level...

Outcome of non-invasive positive pressure ventilation in paediatric neuromuscular disease.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Background: Non-invasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV) has a beneficial effect on nocturnal hypoventilation and hospitalisation rates in adults with static or slowly progressive neuromuscular disease and respiratory failure. Its role in...

Tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and adolescent mental health.(Archivist)
February 1, 2004... Young adolescents who smoke regularly are more likely than non-smokers to have mental health problems. This is the main finding of a study done in 1999 through the Office for National Statistics (A Boys and colleagues. British Journal of...

The relative efficacy of two brief treatments for sleep problems in young learning disabled (mentally retarded) children: a randomised controlled trial.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Background: Settling and night waking problems are particularly prevalent, persistent, and generally considered difficult to treat in children with a learning disability, although intervention trials are few. Scarce resources, however, limit...

A randomised controlled trial of standing programme on bone mineral density in non-ambulant children with cerebral palsy.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Background: Severely disabled children with cerebral palsy (CP) are prone to low trauma fractures, which are associated with reduced bone mineral density. Aims: To determine whether participation in 50% longer periods of standing (in...

Return to school after brain injury.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Aims: To examine return to school and classroom performance following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Methods: This cross-sectional study set in the community comprised a group of 67 school-age children with TBI (35 mild, 13 moderate, 19...

Are referrals to occupational therapy for developmental coordination disorder appropriate?(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Aims: To assess children referred to the Occupational Therapy Service in Gwent with a presumptive diagnosis of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) in order to investigate the appropriateness of their referral. Methods: Non-urgent...

John Snow's theory of rickets.(Archivist)
February 1, 2004... John Snow was born in 1813, the son of a labourer in Yorkshire. He was responsible for one of the most celebrated acts in medical history when, on 2 September 1854 he cut short an outbreak of cholera in London by getting the handle of the Bond...

Incidence and prevalence of the 22q11 deletion syndrome: a population-based study in Western Sweden.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Background: Almost all cases of DiGeorge syndrome, velo-cardio-facial syndrome and conotruncal anomaly face syndrome result from a common deletion of chromosome 22q11.2. These syndromes are usually referred to as the 22q11 deletion syndrome...

Adoption and Children Act 2002.(Archivist)
February 1, 2004... Just as the Children Act 1989 gave primacy to the welfare of the child so does the Adoption and Children Act 2002 which received royal assent in November 2002 (Frank Roper. National Children's Bureau. Highlight no 199. May 2003). The Act...

Head injury and limb fracture in modern playgrounds.(Short Report)
February 1, 2004... Arch Dis Child 2004;89:152-153. doi: 10.1136/adc.2003.024364 Playground standards have been introduced throughout the Western world to promote safe play for children. They advise on the design, dimensions, and layout of playgrounds,...

Nutrition in the 21 st century: what is going wrong; "Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour" (Shakespeare, Richard II, act 1, scene 3, line 236).
February 1, 2004... Arch Dis Child 2004;89:154-158. doi: 10.1136/adc.2003.019703 Over the past 20 years there has been increasing interest in the central role of nutrition in growth and development. Much of the research has been around the issue of very long...

The impact of presenting problem based guidelines for children with medical problems in an accident and emergency department.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Aims: To evaluate the impact of presenting problem based guidelines in managing children with either diarrhoea (with or without vomiting) or seizure (with or without fever). Methods: This prospective observational study with an intervention...

Patterns of admissions for children with special needs to the paediatric assessment unit.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Background: Children with special needs present a challenge to those involved in their care. Aims: To determine the role of the acute assessment unit for these children. Methods: Case notes and other records were reviewed for...

Outcome of children with neuromuscular disease admitted to paediatric intensive care.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Aims: To determine the outcome of children with neuromuscular disease (NMD) following admission to a tertiary referral paediatric intensive care (PICU). Methods: All children with chronic NMD whose first PICU admission was between July...

Correlation of simultaneously obtained capillary, venous, and arterial blood gases of patients in a paediatric intensive care unit.(Original Article)
February 1, 2004... Aims: To investigate the correlation of pH, partial pressure of oxygen (P[O.sub.2]), partial pressure of carbon dioxide (PC[O.sub.2]), base excess (BE), and bicarbonate (HC[O.sub.3]) between arterial (ABG), venous (VBG), and capillary (CBG)...

Detection of severe protein-energy malnutrition by nurses in the Gambia.(Original, Article)
February 1, 2004... Aim: To test whether nurses can use the WHO integrated management of childhood illness (IMCI) nutrition algorithm to identify reliably severe protein-energy malnutrition in children. Methods: Nurses were trained to identify severe...

The feasibility and acceptability of collecting oral fluid from healthy children for anti-HCV testing.(Short Report)
February 1, 2004... Arch Dis Child 2004;89:185-187. doi: 10.1136/adc.2003.031310 Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a global public health problem affecting an estimated 3% of the world population; in Scotland, an estimated 35 000 people, 0.7% of the...

ESPE/LWPES consensus statement on diabetic ketoacidosis in children and adolescents.
February 1, 2004... Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (TIDM). Mortality is predominantly related to the occurrence of cerebral oedema; only a minority of deaths in DKA are...

The metabolic syndrome: highly prevalent in overweight adolescents.(Journal Watch)
February 1, 2004... The metabolic syndrome is associated with the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Using data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1988-1994), researchers evaluated the syndrome's prevalence in...

Adherence to asthma medication influenced by parental expectations and fears.(Journal Watch)
February 1, 2004... To counteract the morbidity and mortality associated with asthma, anti-inflammatory medication (AIM) is recommended for all children and adolescents with persistent asthma (defined in the NIH guideline as symptoms occurring >2 days/week or...

Improving asthma care in children.(Journal Watch)
February 1, 2004... * Persistent asthma is the most common chronic condition of childhood, so improving care is crucial. Investigators in Australia randomized 174 children with persistent asthma (age range, 5-12 years) to either proactive care or routine care...

Health beliefs could explain some health disparities.(Journal Watch)
February 1, 2004... Reasons for racial disparities in health care are not understood well, partly because many researchers who have tried to identify racial disparities have used large administrative databases with limited clinical information. For example, lung...

Epinephrine better than albuterol for treating bronchiolitis.(Journal Watch)
February 1, 2004... About 12% of infants develop bronchiolitis in their first year. Results from several recent studies have indicated that bronchodilator treatments are not efficacious for bronchiolitis, but use of epinephrine is increasing in infants. To examine...

Letters.(Post Script)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2004... If you have a burning desire to respond to a paper published in ADC or F&N, why not make use of our "rapid response" option? Log onto our website (www.archdischild.com), find the paper that interests you, and send your response via email by...

Food allergy in childhood.(Post Script)
February 1, 2004... We thank Colver, MacDougall, and Cant for their response to our paper. (1) The message underpinning our paper was that severe allergic reactions to foods are not as uncommon as MacDougall et al suggested. (2) However, we are not comparing like...

Symptomatic vitamin D deficiency among non-Caucasian adolescents living in the United Kingdom.(Post Script)
February 1, 2004... We have previously drawn attention to a resurgence of vitamin D deficiency rickets in young children of South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Middle Eastern origin, living in the UK. (1) (2) We now describe nine (one male)...

Milk fats and asthma.(Archivist)
February 1, 2004... Studies performed mainly on adults have suggested that diet may influence asthma. Fruits, vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotene may have a protective effect. Now a birth cohort study in the Netherlands (AH Wijga and colleagues. Thorax...

Lucina.
February 1, 2004... Children are exposed to nitrogen dioxide (N[O.sub.2]) from gas cooking appliances in the home and from vehicle exhausts. In Southampton (Lancet 2003;361:1939-44) 114 children aged 8-11 years with asthma were studied for up to 13 months....

Lucina.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... There is uncertainty about the best policy for the visual screening of young children. A systematic review in 1997 led to the conclusion that pre-school screening could be discontinued and that has been done in some places. It has been proposed...

Lucina.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... There is evidence that throughout the world as a whole low family income affects the health of children more than that of adults. But the effect of changes in family income in high-income welfare states is uncertain. In Sweden (Journal of...

Lucina.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... A more conservative approach to surgery is often recommended for children with Hirschsprung's disease who also have Down's syndrome. A report from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Journal of Pediatric Surgery 2003;38:946-9) includes nine children with...

Lucina.
February 1, 2004... Plastic surgeons in Milwaukee (Pediatric Dermatology 2003;20:108-12) have advised against the practice of removing pedunculated supernumary digits in infants by simple suture ligation. Instead, they excise the lesions, being careful to identify...

Lucina.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) was first described as a respiratory pathogen in children in the Netherlands in 2001. Since then hMPV respiratory infection has been reported in Australia, Canada, and the UK. A recent study (Pediatrics...

Lucina.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... The diagnosis of McCune-Albright syndrome (characteristic clinical triad, polyostotic fibrous dysplasia of bone, cafe au lait spots, and endocrinopathies) may be missed in children who present with the bone disease. In Indianapolis (Journal of...

Lucina.
February 1, 2004... Adult patients posing as children could be a danger on children's wards. At a district general hospital in London (Paediatric Nursing 2003;15:18) two 21-year olds, one male and one female, were admitted to the children's ward within a week of...

Lucina.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... Patients with facial port wine stains often develop glaucoma the management of which may be difficult. The prostaglandin F2a analogue, latanoprost, lowers intraocular pressure by increasing uveoscleral outflow. At Great Ormond Street Hospital...