Promising Practices and Patient-Centered Medical Neighborhoods for Childhood Obesity
Promising Practices and Patient-Centered Medical Neighborhoods for Childhood Obesity 150 150 Tiasha Letostak, PhD

An algorithm for assessment and management of childhood obesity, along with patient-centered medical neighborhoods, provides avenues for comprehensive weight management for children 2 years and older. Although childhood obesity affects 17 percent of children in the United States, and nearly one-quarter of these children…

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New App Enables Families and Researchers to Track Seizures With an Apple Watch
New App Enables Families and Researchers to Track Seizures With an Apple Watch 150 150 Gina Bericchia

Could a wearable app help children with seizures? With the launch of the Track It! app for Apple Watch, that’s what researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital are hoping to find out. Nationwide Children’s Hospital and SeizureTracker.com recently introduced a new wearable app to help track seizures…

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Should Melatonin Be Used To Treat Childhood Insomnia?
Should Melatonin Be Used To Treat Childhood Insomnia? 150 150 Mark Splaingard, MD

Mark L. Splaingard, MD, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, answers a question often asked by primary care providers. With some reports that insomnia symptoms are experienced by 20 percent or more of children, health care providers (and parents) often…

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Understanding Stress Experienced by Survivors of Congenital Heart Disease
Understanding Stress Experienced by Survivors of Congenital Heart Disease 150 150 Tiasha Letostak, PhD

For adolescent and adult survivors of congenital heart disease, how they perceive disease-related stress has a key connection to how they report health outcomes, such as quality of life and emotional well-being. Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital are the first to systematically identify different…

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Two Genes Linked to Postpartum Immunity Revival in Women With Persistent Hepatitis C
Two Genes Linked to Postpartum Immunity Revival in Women With Persistent Hepatitis C 150 150 Kevin Mayhood

Research may provide a model for identifying immune factors needed to control chronic infections. Alternative forms of two genes are associated with a boost in immunity to hepatitis C after childbirth, a study led by a Nationwide Children’s Hospital physician-researcher shows. At three months…

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How to Reduce Necrotizing Enterocolitis in the NICU
How to Reduce Necrotizing Enterocolitis in the NICU 150 150 Jeb Phillips

A QI project with simple, inexpensive interventions significantly lowered the NEC rate in one of the country’s largest neonatal units. In 2011, a quality improvement team at Nationwide Children’s Hospital developed a short list of simple, economical strategies to limit necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), one…

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What Do Space Rocks Have to Do With Preterm Birth?
What Do Space Rocks Have to Do With Preterm Birth? 150 150 Abbie Miller

A brief history of nanobacteria and their implications for human health. I remember when nanobacteria were a really big deal. Press-conference-by-POTUS-about-evidence-of-extraterrestrial-life-level big deal. I hadn’t thought much about them until recently, when they made a surprise appearance in a presentation on idiopathic preterm birth by Irina…

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New Study Points to a Possible Cause of Many Preterm Births
New Study Points to a Possible Cause of Many Preterm Births 150 150 Jeb Phillips

The discovery that small calcium deposits in fetal membranes may lead to a mother’s water breaking prematurely suggests that dietary or other interventions could prevent those preterm births. Most spontaneous preterm births do not have causes that are easy to identify. Physicians frequently have…

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Should Hormone Therapy be Considered for Inappropriate Sexual Behavior in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder?
Should Hormone Therapy be Considered for Inappropriate Sexual Behavior in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder? 150 150 Jeb Phillips

Families worry when children with autism spectrum disorder display inappropriate sexual behaviors, but specialists say hormonal suppression should not be the first-line approach. Leena Nahata, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, has seen this kind of case in her own practice, so she suspects…

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Stronger Together: A Multi-institutional Database Is Connecting Down Syndrome Clinics for Better Outcomes
Stronger Together: A Multi-institutional Database Is Connecting Down Syndrome Clinics for Better Outcomes 1024 575 Stephanie Santoro, MD

Due to medical advances, people with Down syndrome are living longer than ever before. This increased life expectancy has nearly doubled in the past 25 years. The National Down Syndrome Society estimates that 400,000 people with Down syndrome are living in the United States.…

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From Military Zones to Pediatric Trauma Centers, Implementing Massive Transfusion Protocols
From Military Zones to Pediatric Trauma Centers, Implementing Massive Transfusion Protocols 150 150 Abbie Miller

While military and adult research has shown massive transfusion protocols to be lifesaving, implementation and validation in pediatrics lags. When someone is critically injured with life-threatening bleeding, the primary objective of the care team is to stop the bleeding and replace the lost blood.…

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Pediatricians and Subspecialists May Need to Up Their ADHD Game
Pediatricians and Subspecialists May Need to Up Their ADHD Game 150 150 Kevin Mayhood

From sixth to eighth grade, Stacy Gibson sought out kids he knew had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and bought their Ritalin or Adderall, sometimes by the handful. “I would party all night,then I’d take the pills to get through class. It gave me a rush of…

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Solving the Problem of Managing Big Genomic Data
Solving the Problem of Managing Big Genomic Data 150 150 Abbie Miller

Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital complete a first-of-its-kind project to evaluate a large-scale genomic data management system on the scale of up to one million genomes. The influx of genomics data resulting from the increasing affordability of whole exome/genome sequencing and President Obama’s Precision…

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Diagnosing GERD in Neonates? Be Cautious
Diagnosing GERD in Neonates? Be Cautious 150 150 Jeb Phillips

Gastroesophageal reflux disease is likely over-diagnosed in neonates, leading to unnecessary and harmful treatment. Approximately 10 percent of infants born preterm in the United States are diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). But it’s almost certain that not all of those babies actually have GERD, say…

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A New Use for Kangaroo Care
A New Use for Kangaroo Care 150 150 Kevin Mayhood

A parent’s touch reduces agitation, allows infants and toddlers to remain extubated after heart surgery. A small percentage of babies and young children who have undergone congenital cardiac surgery and early tracheal extubation are treated with a calming parent’s touch at Nationwide Children’s Hospital…

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How Can We Increase the HPV Vaccination Rate?
How Can We Increase the HPV Vaccination Rate? 150 150 Michael T. Brady, MD

Cancer is a terrifying diagnosis for a patient to receive or a doctor to give. So it would make sense that a vaccine proven to prevent cancer would be welcomed by everyone. The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine could prevent 28,500 HPV-related cancer cases – cervical, vaginal,…

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How to Integrate Genomics into Clinical Practice
How to Integrate Genomics into Clinical Practice 150 150 Abbie Miller

Recommendations from the Clinical Genetics Think Tank outline five key areas of focus for bringing genome and exome sequencing into the clinic. Clinical genome and exome sequencing (CGES) as a diagnostic tool is altering practice for clinical geneticists, genetic counselors and other clinical specialists.…

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In Sight: Two Stage Surgery for Epilepsy
In Sight: Two Stage Surgery for Epilepsy 150 150 Abbie Miller

Surgery proves to be a viable option for patients with medically refractory epilepsy. Childhood onset epilepsy affects 1 percent of children worldwide. About 25 to 30 percent of these patients will have medically refractory epilepsy, continuing to have seizures despite using two or more antiseizure medications.…

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Great Minds Aren’t Thinking Alike About Asthma Care
Great Minds Aren’t Thinking Alike About Asthma Care 150 150 Brianne Moore

A recent audit of the Pediatric Hospital Information System using template matching finds wide variation in care provided to pediatric asthma patients. While asthma is a common and manageable disease, nine people still die from asthma each day. It is well known that asthma…

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One Dose Probiotic Biofilm Protects Against NEC
One Dose Probiotic Biofilm Protects Against NEC 150 150 Kevin Mayhood

Probiotic biofilm enables the beneficial bacteria to withstand stomach acid, promote microbial activity and decrease intestinal inflammation. A single dose of a probiotic biofilm grown on microspheres prevented or significantly reduced the severity of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in animal models of the disease, researchers…

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