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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > 4 Pediatric Studies Every Parent Needs to Know About (Archived Pedcast)


	Podcast:		Portable Practical Pediatrics
	Episode:		4 Pediatric Studies Every Parent Needs to Know About (Archived Pedcast)
	Category:		Kids & family
	Duration:		00:12:50
	Publish Date:		2020-10-17 21:04:51
	Description:		Welcome, I am Dr. Paul Smolen, also known as Doc Smo and this is Portable Practical Pediatrics. Every once in a while I like to give my listeners a glimpse of what is new in pediatric research that can translate into practical knowledge. I'm not talking about new high tech treatments for exotic diseases but rather new information that most parents can use in their everyday parenting. So here goes with a conversation about four, high quality, peer reviewed articles that I think you will find interesting. Stay engaged, stay informed, and of course, stay tuned. Today's pedcast is brought to you by audible, the new way to digest books. For me, Audible has become my preferred method of exploring books, whether I am cutting the grass or driving in the car. Expand your world today by subscribing to audible. Just hit the link that accompanies this podcast to get started. Photo compliments of Pixabay Musical Introduction Article #1- Every year, most parents are put in the position of deciding if their children should get a flu shot or not. Is that flu shot important for your kids? Is it worth all the effort, hassle, and expense to arrange for them to get vaccinated? It's only the flu, right? Besides, many parents claim that flu shots can give the flu to their children (not) and worst of all, my little junior hates shots. Why do I have to deal with this every year you may be asking? Which brings us to a recent excellent article by Dr. Mei Shang et al at the CDC. Dr. Shang analyzed all the known pediatric deaths from influenza in the U.S. between the years 2010 until 2016. He discovered that 70% of those children who died from flu had not been vaccinated and that 1/2 of the those deaths occurred in children who were perfectly healthy prior to the having the influenza infection with no sign of asthma, diabetes, neurologic disorders, immune deficiencies or any other underlying complicating factors. This is new information since previously; we thought that most pediatric deaths from the flu were in children with pre-existing medical conditions. No, fully 1/2 of the deaths occurred in previously healthy children, most of whom were not immunized. What a shame. You can't do much to prevent your children from heaven forbid coming down with leukemia but according to Dr. Shang, you can likely prevent them from having a severe life threatening case of influenza. Dr. Shang's study also revealed that the most vulnerable children were those infants less than six months of age, too young to be vaccinated. Protecting them depends on vaccinating those around them and especially mom during pregnancy. Again, according to Dr. Shang, we are not doing too well at getting pregnant moms vaccinated, with only a 50% success rate in his sample. I want you to factor all this into your decision whether or not to get your children vaccinated this fall. Take home message: Is the flu vaccine perfect-no/ is the flu shot some seasons not very protective-yes/ but in most seasons, it is about 70% protective. If I knew that 7 out of 10 times I visited Las Vegas I would win money, I would go regularly. I'd be in. In the same way, you should plan on a seasonal flu shot for all your children since there is a very good chance, it will protect them from a severe influenza infection. Article #2- There has been a lot of talk about the safety of cough and cold medicines in children. We have talked about it quite a few times in the past on Portable Practical Pediatrics. Yes, there have been deaths from children taking these medications and the CDC is strongly opposed to their use in children but how dangerous are they really? To answer that question, Dr. Green from The Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center, looked at 4202 "events", where a child or their family sought treatment and evaluation for a specific symptom or symptoms that was related to taking cough and cold medicines. 67% of these events occurred when a child had an unsupervised inges...
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