by Tom Ulrich on May 14, 2012
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 »
by Claire McCarthy on November 15, 2011
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 »
by Claire McCarthy on October 20, 2011
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 »
by Claire McCarthy on January 11, 2011
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 news that Dr. Andrew Wakefield appears to have invented some of the information in his famous 1998 study linking the MMR vaccine and autism is shocking. But it’s old news that the study was not a good study. A year ago, The Lancet retracted it. And even before that, nobody had been able to replicate it, and many studies contradicted it.
Yet some people still want to believe the study. This is really frustrating to me.
I’m not frustrated because people want to believe Dr. Wakefield’s idea. We don’t know what causes autism. Hopefully we will soon, but until then any idea is open for discussion and investigation. What frustrates me is that even before these revelations, it was clear that the study was flawed. The study isn’t good science; it doesn’t show anything, let alone prove anything. Nevertheless, people have made decisions about immunizing their children based on it. That is really frustrating, especially when there is so much good science to show that vaccines don’t cause autism—and do save lives. Full story »
by Tripp Underwood on January 6, 2011
As you may have heard on the news this morning, the British Medical Journal further discredited the research of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, an English doctor whose work attempts to link autism to vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella. Wakefield’s data and research practices have been questioned in the past, (he was barred from practicing medicine in the U.K. by the country’s General Medical Council in May) but two new articles from the BMJ go as far as to claim that his research was not only incorrect, but purposely falsified, possibly for financial gain.
Yesterday’s article and accompanying editorial will be the first in a series stating that Wakefield either misrepresented or altered information in his study of 12 children, whose autism he claims was linked to vaccination. According to the article’s author Brian Deer, the series will “expose the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school.”
Since 2004 Deer has been publishing stories discrediting Wakefield’s findings on the dangers of MMR vaccination, and now accuses the doctor of purposely submitting falsified data to prove his theories. A separate BMJ editorial written about Wakefield calls his work “an elaborate fraud.”
Leonard Rappaport MD, MS and chief of Children’s Hospital Boston’s Division of Developmental Medicine, has this to say about Wakefield’s work: Full story »
by Tripp Underwood on July 19, 2010
Vaccinations have weakened, but not eradicated, many once fatal diseases
Polio. Scarlet fever. Typhoid. Today, this list does little more than conjure up old memories of iron lungs, crutches and maybe one sad velveteen rabbit. But less than a century ago, these words were enough to make most parents go white with dread.
Thanks to advancements in medicine and vaccination, these diseases have been all but eradicated. But as powerful as modern medicine has become, there are still holes in its defenses, as proven by a recent Californian outbreak of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, that is well on its way to being the most widespread outbreak the state has seen in 50 years. So far over 900 cases of pertussis have been confirmed, with a death toll of at least five, prompting state health officials to declare it an epidemic.
The sheer volume of whooping cough cases has many parents worried and wondering how a commonly contained disease like pertussis could experience such a powerful revival. Full story »
by Melissa Jeltsen on June 21, 2010
Newborn babies can’t be immunized against most diseases because they’re unable to mount effective immune responses to most vaccines. Instead, pediatric vaccines are given at two, four and six months of age, when the immune system is more responsive. But that leaves newborns—with undeveloped immune systems—highly vulnerable to severe infections. Worldwide, more than two million newborns and infants under six months of age die from infectious diseases every year.
Ofer Levy, MD, PhD, in the Division of Infectious Diseases, wants to change that by developing vaccines that will work in babies. He’s been studying how to enhance the immune system at birth so that newborns can respond to vaccines effectively. On Friday, the researcher received a $2.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop vaccines for newborns. Full story »
by Tripp Underwood on April 28, 2010
According to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly all children who get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (more than 80%) will have no side effects. Still, despite scientific evidence, there are a growing number of parents who opt not to get their children vaccinated because they fear the vaccinations could be linked to autism.
Last night PBS aired Frontline: the Vaccine War, an in-depth journalistic look at vaccinations, and why some parents choose not to vaccinate their children.
As in most vaccination reports, the idea that there is a correlation between the mumps, measles and rubella vaccination and cases of autism was at the forefront of the discussion. The show has generated a good deal of debate about social responsibility versus parental choice, and is creating a stir on both sides of the vaccine issue.
The Frontline program is similar to a Thrive post from April 14, which looked at two separate outbreaks of measles in North America and the cost they posed to the public-at-large. Children’s Hospital Boston’s Ronald Samuels, MD, MPH discussed the vaccination controversy and his views on the subject.
