Feeling "a little" pinch is a small price to pay for good healthcare. But we can do more to reduce the discomfort. (UNICEF Sverige/Flickr)
I remember distinctly both of my boys’ 4-month-old well visits. Mostly because of the shots: all four of them.
Neither boy was particularly happy about being poked that much (though the shiny Band-Aids afterward did help a little).
My wife and I would have loved to help ease the pain of the shots, but we didn’t have any idea how. Frankly, I don’t know that, in the moment, it crossed our minds that there was something we could do, and it wasn’t something we thought to ask our pediatrician about. I mean, it was just a little bit of pain, right?
The problem, though, is that those little bits of pain add up. “Millions of injections are given to children around the world every year,” says Neil Schechter, MD, a pain specialist in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Anesthesia Department. Schechter recently published an article in Pediatrics where he commented that while we’ve come a long way in the last 50 years in understanding and addressing pain in children—especially after surgery or due to chronic illness—pain in the pediatric office hasn’t received the same level of attention.
“The pain from shots and other minor procedures in a pediatrician’s office doesn’t have the same poignancy as pain in an inpatient setting,” he says, “but it is still pain. And if we want to encourage patients’ and families’ cooperation and participation in routine healthcare, we want to keep pain to a minimum.” Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
A child with autism is more likely to do well if his mother is white and educated.
This is the message of a study just released in the journal Pediatrics, and it’s something we need to pay attention to—now. Full story »
When you hear the word robot, which image comes to mind first?
Those of us raised on Star Wars and Buck Rogers are likely to identify with the first image, but physically speaking, the robots of today have more in common with your computer and microwave than a Hollywood android.
They may look less interesting than your favorite sci-fi film characters, but modern medical robots are still quite helpful. So much so that the Boston Globe recently ran a story about a pilot project that placed a medical robot created by VGo Communications in the home of the Tally family, whose 2 year-old son Aidan is recovering from surgery he received at Children’s Hospital Boston last month to treat his urinary reflux .
The VGo robot’s main function is videoconferencing, which connects the Ashland-based family to their doctors and nurses here in Boston. Operated by remote control from Children’s, the VGo robot lets medical professionals see and communicate with Aidan’s parents, take video and close-up photos of Aidan’s scars for medical review and figure out if the prescribed medication is doing its job.
And because videoconferencing appointments are easier to coordinate than hospital visits, the Tally family was able to check in with Aidan’s care team every three days, instead of waiting for their first post surgical appointment, scheduled for six weeks after his surgery. Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Claire McCarthy, MD
I was really nervous when my daughter invited the autistic boy in her fourth grade class to her birthday party.
I was happy she wanted to include him, don’t get me wrong. It was just that, well, anyone who has been to Roller World in Saugus will understand. It’s a really overwhelming place. It’s usually crowded (finding the people you came with can be tough), and between the music and the crowd noise it can be hard to hear the person next to you. It’s dimly lit, with a distracting and disorienting disco ball light thing over the big rink. And when you are on the big rink, you have to move in the right direction and at the right speed, without zigzagging, or you can get knocked over. Yep, perfect place for an autistic kid.
I shouldn’t have worried. The kids had it covered. Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Claire McCarthy, MD
Avoiding the chickenpox vaccine has been in the news recently, with the story of a company offering lollipops licked by kids with chickenpox as a way to give your child the illness. Some parents, apparently, would rather use those lollipops, or take their child to a chickenpox party to play with infected kids, than give their child the vaccine.
It got me thinking about my mother and her quest to give me chickenpox when I was a child. She would have drawn the line at the lollipops (which is a ludicrous idea—not only is it incredibly unlikely to work, but who knows what other germs were in that kid’s mouth), but she would have taken me to the parties in a heartbeat. She did her own version: she took me to play with neighborhood kids when they got chickenpox. Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
The MMR vaccine is the most efficient protection against measles
For years, measles has been rare in the United States, thanks to immunization. But recently, that has changed. This year we’ve seen lots of outbreaks, mostly started by unimmunized people going to or coming from countries that have lots of measles—and then giving the infection to unimmunized people here. In Massachusetts we have had 24 cases of measles this year—19 since May!
What is measles?
Measles, also called rubeola, is a very contagious respiratory illness.
What causes it?
Measles is caused by a virus. It is spread through the air when people with the illness cough, sneeze, or simply breathe near someone else. It lives in the mucus of infected people, so if an infected person has mucus on their hands (from touching their mouth or nose) and touches something (like a doorknob), they can leave the virus behind for others to catch.
What are the symptoms?
The symptoms of measles include fever, runny nose, sore throat, rash, red eyes, cough, and body aches. Sometimes people with measles get white spots in their mouth called Koplik spots. The spots in the mouth and rash usually start a few days after the illness has begun, so at the beginning it can be hard to tell measles from the common cold or flu. Full story »
If you’ve spent time in front of a TV or computer lately, you probably already know that Apple just released the latest version of the iPad, a faster and more portable edition of the already popular tablet. As the mobile technology revolution gathers speed, many medical professionals are trying to incorporate these devices into their practices, but few have been as successful as clinicians using it in their work with patients whose abilities to communicate has been hindered by a medical condition. Howard Shane, PhD, director of Children’s Hospital Boston’s Center for Communication Enhancement (CCE) is the owner of two new iPads, and an advocate for their use in clinical settings.
“Technology plays a big role in enriching the lives of many people with communication disorders, not just children on the autism spectrum, but people with motor impairments like cerebral palsy or people who are deaf or hard of hearing as well,” Shane says. “These new devices are giving many people communication options that weren’t available a few years ago.” Full story »
Can studying brain patterns lead to earlier identification of autism?
An early detection of autism is key because it gives clinicians and parents ample time to formulate a treatment plan. But unfortunately autism is difficult to identify in infants and young children because many of its symptoms aren’t noticeable until the child is walking, talking and regularly interacting with his environment.
But work by Children’s Hospital Boston researchers suggests that a noninvasive test to evaluate an infant’s autism risk could one day be available for children under a year of age. Full story »
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