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Last weekend, Seattle police hosted a gun buy-back program that netted 348 pistols, 364 rifles, three “street sweepers” (shotguns capable of holding twelve 12-gauge shells), and one Stinger surface-to-air missile launcher, slightly used. Personally, I won’t feel my kids are safe until every school in the nation is protected by personnel armed with, at minimum, anti-tank weapons, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades. After all, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a missile launcher is a good guy with a missile launcher.
Urine Trouble
By now, I should no longer be surprised when something I always thought was true turns out to be all wrong. Pluto is a planet! No, it’s just an conceited asteroid. Lance Armstrong is the world’s greatest cyclist! Nope, but he’s still an exceptionally talented amateur pharmacist. Infants and toddlers with unexplained fevers must be tested and treated for occult urinary tract infections or their kidneys will become so scarred that even Lance Armstrong can’t save them! Now a comprehensive literature review in Annals Of Emergency Medicine suggests that this theory should follow the dinosaurs in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, you know, the ones who perished in the desert heat?
A team of authors from Mt. Sinai and Columbia dismembered the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of urinary tract infections in children aged 2 -24 months like a Thanksgiving turkey (Dr. Daniel Runde won the wishbone pull). How compelling was their analysis? Let’s just say that after I finished the article I composed a hand-written note of apology to every febrile toddler I’ve ever catheterized. Their argument boils down to two words:"scarring, schmarring!" Febrile urinary tract infections may only rarely represent pyelonephritis, early treatment of pyelonephritis doesn’t appear to prevent renal scarring better than later treatment, and when renal scarring does occur, it doesn’t seem to cause impaired renal function or hypertension. I’m looking forward to reading the forthcoming letters to the editor from pediatric urologists, but in the meantime, I’m wondering if the mandatory catheterized urinalysis for febrile toddlers is the next Brontosaurus.
Simple Minds
Do you have anyone in your life whose advice always starts with the words, “Why don’t you just...?” Because when you hear that clause you know that whatever comes next is going to waste your time. Overweight and obese kids must hate these words even more, since they hear them so often. “Why don’t you just eat less? Why don’t you just exercise more? Why do you look so angry?” An Australian study in Pediatrics this month drives home the point that managing childhood obesity is a lot more complicated than just adding a little exercise.
The study examined 182 overweight and obese children in Melbourne over 3 years, tracking their activity levels for a week at a time using body-mounted accelerometers. Activity levels were not completely divorced from weight outcomes, but the relationship, like hospital coffee, was disappointingly weak. Kids who increased the time they spent in moderate to vigorous activity were less likely than others to see their BMIs actually worsen. But even large increases in physical activity led to only marginal drops in children’s BMIs, results less impressive than Carly Rae Jepsen’s follow-up to “Call Me Maybe.” So next time you hear someone suggest that a kid wouldn’t be overweight if he would just add a bit of exercise, you can say, “Why don’t you just learn a little more about this subject?”
Dry, but...
I can’t wait to see how over-protective parents cope with a new study in Developmental Science. Psychologists at New York University evaluated 30 toddlers at 13 and 19 months of age to see how often they fell down while walking in cloth diapers, disposable diapers, or no diapers at all. Naked children, allowed a completely natural gait, fell rarely. Toddlers wearing thin disposable diapers fell more often, and those in cloth diapers fell the most. The authors attributed the increased number of falls to the shorter, wider steps toddlers were forced to take in order to accommodate the bulk of their nappies.
Parents interested in providing their children with the most natural possible environments will now be forced to consider whether they should allow their toddlers to roam the house naked or, alternately, buy twice as many cloth diapers, one for the child’s bottom and another to protect her head. If these results lead parents to start bringing their children out in public exposed, I suppose we’ll have to legislate some new health codes to cover the situation, which could only be called, “unconcealed carry laws.”
David L. Hill, M.D, FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, NC and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets. Dr. Hill is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like A Pro (AAP Publishing 2012).
Last weekend, Seattle police hosted a gun buy-back program that netted 348 pistols, 364 rifles, three “street sweepers” (shotguns capable of holding twelve 12-gauge shells), and one Stinger surface-to-air missile launcher, slightly used. Personally, I won’t feel my kids are safe until every school in the nation is protected by personnel armed with, at minimum, anti-tank weapons, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades. After all, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a missile launcher is a good guy with a missile launcher.
Urine Trouble
By now, I should no longer be surprised when something I always thought was true turns out to be all wrong. Pluto is a planet! No, it’s just an conceited asteroid. Lance Armstrong is the world’s greatest cyclist! Nope, but he’s still an exceptionally talented amateur pharmacist. Infants and toddlers with unexplained fevers must be tested and treated for occult urinary tract infections or their kidneys will become so scarred that even Lance Armstrong can’t save them! Now a comprehensive literature review in Annals Of Emergency Medicine suggests that this theory should follow the dinosaurs in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, you know, the ones who perished in the desert heat?
A team of authors from Mt. Sinai and Columbia dismembered the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of urinary tract infections in children aged 2 -24 months like a Thanksgiving turkey (Dr. Daniel Runde won the wishbone pull). How compelling was their analysis? Let’s just say that after I finished the article I composed a hand-written note of apology to every febrile toddler I’ve ever catheterized. Their argument boils down to two words:"scarring, schmarring!" Febrile urinary tract infections may only rarely represent pyelonephritis, early treatment of pyelonephritis doesn’t appear to prevent renal scarring better than later treatment, and when renal scarring does occur, it doesn’t seem to cause impaired renal function or hypertension. I’m looking forward to reading the forthcoming letters to the editor from pediatric urologists, but in the meantime, I’m wondering if the mandatory catheterized urinalysis for febrile toddlers is the next Brontosaurus.
Simple Minds
Do you have anyone in your life whose advice always starts with the words, “Why don’t you just...?” Because when you hear that clause you know that whatever comes next is going to waste your time. Overweight and obese kids must hate these words even more, since they hear them so often. “Why don’t you just eat less? Why don’t you just exercise more? Why do you look so angry?” An Australian study in Pediatrics this month drives home the point that managing childhood obesity is a lot more complicated than just adding a little exercise.
The study examined 182 overweight and obese children in Melbourne over 3 years, tracking their activity levels for a week at a time using body-mounted accelerometers. Activity levels were not completely divorced from weight outcomes, but the relationship, like hospital coffee, was disappointingly weak. Kids who increased the time they spent in moderate to vigorous activity were less likely than others to see their BMIs actually worsen. But even large increases in physical activity led to only marginal drops in children’s BMIs, results less impressive than Carly Rae Jepsen’s follow-up to “Call Me Maybe.” So next time you hear someone suggest that a kid wouldn’t be overweight if he would just add a bit of exercise, you can say, “Why don’t you just learn a little more about this subject?”
Dry, but...
I can’t wait to see how over-protective parents cope with a new study in Developmental Science. Psychologists at New York University evaluated 30 toddlers at 13 and 19 months of age to see how often they fell down while walking in cloth diapers, disposable diapers, or no diapers at all. Naked children, allowed a completely natural gait, fell rarely. Toddlers wearing thin disposable diapers fell more often, and those in cloth diapers fell the most. The authors attributed the increased number of falls to the shorter, wider steps toddlers were forced to take in order to accommodate the bulk of their nappies.
Parents interested in providing their children with the most natural possible environments will now be forced to consider whether they should allow their toddlers to roam the house naked or, alternately, buy twice as many cloth diapers, one for the child’s bottom and another to protect her head. If these results lead parents to start bringing their children out in public exposed, I suppose we’ll have to legislate some new health codes to cover the situation, which could only be called, “unconcealed carry laws.”
David L. Hill, M.D, FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, NC and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets. Dr. Hill is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like A Pro (AAP Publishing 2012).
Last weekend, Seattle police hosted a gun buy-back program that netted 348 pistols, 364 rifles, three “street sweepers” (shotguns capable of holding twelve 12-gauge shells), and one Stinger surface-to-air missile launcher, slightly used. Personally, I won’t feel my kids are safe until every school in the nation is protected by personnel armed with, at minimum, anti-tank weapons, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades. After all, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a missile launcher is a good guy with a missile launcher.
Urine Trouble
By now, I should no longer be surprised when something I always thought was true turns out to be all wrong. Pluto is a planet! No, it’s just an conceited asteroid. Lance Armstrong is the world’s greatest cyclist! Nope, but he’s still an exceptionally talented amateur pharmacist. Infants and toddlers with unexplained fevers must be tested and treated for occult urinary tract infections or their kidneys will become so scarred that even Lance Armstrong can’t save them! Now a comprehensive literature review in Annals Of Emergency Medicine suggests that this theory should follow the dinosaurs in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, you know, the ones who perished in the desert heat?
A team of authors from Mt. Sinai and Columbia dismembered the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of urinary tract infections in children aged 2 -24 months like a Thanksgiving turkey (Dr. Daniel Runde won the wishbone pull). How compelling was their analysis? Let’s just say that after I finished the article I composed a hand-written note of apology to every febrile toddler I’ve ever catheterized. Their argument boils down to two words:"scarring, schmarring!" Febrile urinary tract infections may only rarely represent pyelonephritis, early treatment of pyelonephritis doesn’t appear to prevent renal scarring better than later treatment, and when renal scarring does occur, it doesn’t seem to cause impaired renal function or hypertension. I’m looking forward to reading the forthcoming letters to the editor from pediatric urologists, but in the meantime, I’m wondering if the mandatory catheterized urinalysis for febrile toddlers is the next Brontosaurus.
Simple Minds
Do you have anyone in your life whose advice always starts with the words, “Why don’t you just...?” Because when you hear that clause you know that whatever comes next is going to waste your time. Overweight and obese kids must hate these words even more, since they hear them so often. “Why don’t you just eat less? Why don’t you just exercise more? Why do you look so angry?” An Australian study in Pediatrics this month drives home the point that managing childhood obesity is a lot more complicated than just adding a little exercise.
The study examined 182 overweight and obese children in Melbourne over 3 years, tracking their activity levels for a week at a time using body-mounted accelerometers. Activity levels were not completely divorced from weight outcomes, but the relationship, like hospital coffee, was disappointingly weak. Kids who increased the time they spent in moderate to vigorous activity were less likely than others to see their BMIs actually worsen. But even large increases in physical activity led to only marginal drops in children’s BMIs, results less impressive than Carly Rae Jepsen’s follow-up to “Call Me Maybe.” So next time you hear someone suggest that a kid wouldn’t be overweight if he would just add a bit of exercise, you can say, “Why don’t you just learn a little more about this subject?”
Dry, but...
I can’t wait to see how over-protective parents cope with a new study in Developmental Science. Psychologists at New York University evaluated 30 toddlers at 13 and 19 months of age to see how often they fell down while walking in cloth diapers, disposable diapers, or no diapers at all. Naked children, allowed a completely natural gait, fell rarely. Toddlers wearing thin disposable diapers fell more often, and those in cloth diapers fell the most. The authors attributed the increased number of falls to the shorter, wider steps toddlers were forced to take in order to accommodate the bulk of their nappies.
Parents interested in providing their children with the most natural possible environments will now be forced to consider whether they should allow their toddlers to roam the house naked or, alternately, buy twice as many cloth diapers, one for the child’s bottom and another to protect her head. If these results lead parents to start bringing their children out in public exposed, I suppose we’ll have to legislate some new health codes to cover the situation, which could only be called, “unconcealed carry laws.”
David L. Hill, M.D, FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, NC and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets. Dr. Hill is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like A Pro (AAP Publishing 2012).