A joint newsletter this month because I ran out of time during a house move. Timely information about the polio catch up plan in London, a video on how to persuade children to take pills, toxic shock syndrome, handle bar injuries and a reminder of July’s Quality Standard from NICE on Fever in the under 5s.
How many respiratory illnesses does it take to make you think of primary immunodeficiency? This, covid vaccination and length and dose of amoxicillin treatment in community acquired pneumonia this month. Do leave comments below.
Useful resources in preparation for this year’s expected RSV bronchiolitis surge in this month’s newsletter. Also, a bit on managing young people who are “tired all the time”, height and weight issues in non face-to-face consultations and a short article asking why do we give children 10 days of foul tasting pen-V qds for tonsillitis instead of 5 days of tds amoxicillin which, it transpires, is actually cheaper? Microbiologists and others are welcome to leave comments below!
March has been guest edited by Dr Jackie Driscoll, Academic GP and erstwhile paediatric registrar. Jackie was keen to produce a newsletter which centres on the child but sees them in the context of their family, their school and neighbourhood.
Do leave comments below:
A bit of a viral soup this month with articles on ‘flu vaccines, how long should children have off school when unwell, NAFLD, and dermatomyositis. Do leave comments below.
I’m uploading this month’s newsletter while teaching in Vietnam at the invitation of a very impressive charity, https://www.newbornsvietnam.org/. I’m glad of the extra 6 hours of September – thanks to the time difference – to publish this on time!
Palivizumab this month; are all your eligible patients having it? A glance at the updated BTS/SIGN guideline on asthma, a very rare case of a cardiac cause of chest pain, how to estimate a child’s weight in an emergency and a bit on haemolysis secondary to G6PD deficiency. Do leave comments below…
More on the coca-cola urine story this month, NF type I, cerebellar ataxia and restless legs syndrome. Do leave comments below.
April came and went a bit too fast for my Paediatric Pearls head. So I’ve produced a joint April/May newsletter for 2019. There’s a bit of safeguarding again this month with a link to a paper on what young people in care think of the language we use, a guide to enteral rehydration of children with D&V, acrodermatitis enteropathica and a reminder of what is normal on a paediatric ECG. Do leave comments below:
I got a few blank faces on a ward round recently when I was working out volumes of diarolyte for rehydrating a child with D&V. We tend to use “5mls every 5 minutes” in our Emergency Departments whatever the size of the child and however dehydrated they are and then, when they fall asleep and we want to move them out of our department for fear of 4-hour breaches, we put an iv line in, take bloods which we then have to act on and start iv fluids which we should then monitor more often than most of us do. Where is the half way point?
Have a look at http://www.paediatricpearls.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Fluid-management-in-childhood-gastroenteritis.pdf for some help with enteral rehydration (which is safer and more efficient overall than intravenous fluids). Please let me know if you disagree with my calculations and work them all out for yourself from scratch if you happen to be dealing with a 16kg child like in the worked example…
NICE on honey this month. And antibiotics in URTIs. Also blueberry muffin syndrome courtesy of our dermatology contributor, medically unexplained symptoms from a great on line resource from MindEd (https://www.minded.org.uk/Component/Details/525083) and information for practitioners and young people and families after a first afebrile seizure. Please do leave comments below: