All Better Pediatrics

   It is strep throat season everyone.  Much of what PJ and I have seen in clinic this week is just that, strep throat.

Below is a link to the American Academy of Pediatrics website.  The article is intended to help you determine the difference between a sore throat, strep throat, and tonsillitis.

http://bit.ly/a7chjj

Let me know if you have any questions and we will be open from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM Saturday and 1:00 to 2:00 Sunday (please get here at 1:00) providing healthcare to kids and helpcare to parents.  We will be open on Sundays through the end of flu season which is March 31^st.

Have a nice weekend.

Dr. Tam

In the attached story the American Academy of Pediatrics is asking that Hot Dogs be redesigned or at least have warning labels to prevent choking.

I don’t know whether either of these steps are necessary but I do recommend that we be careful when feeding young children such foods as hot dogs, grapes, or marshmallows just to name a few.  In general taking precautions like cutting the foods into small pieces is a simple and smart ounce of prevention. I recommend reading the following article in a recent edition of USA Today: 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-02-22-1Achoke22_ST_N.htm

My Recipe For Chili Cheese Dogs 

Below is my recipe for chili cheese dogs.  Feed the family safely and for under $5.

 Grill a package of hotdogs.  Chop half the hot dogs into small child sized pieces and place into a bowl.  Pour a can of your favorite chili over the hotdog pieces and microwave till warm.  Ladle some of the chili dog mixture over a piece of toast, add grated cheddar cheese and serve.

The next night you could chop the other half of the hot dogs and mix them with macaroni and cheese.

Enjoy and have a good day!

Dr. Tam

                             February 8, 2010

I know that this week’s weather was very inconvenient for most everyone.  Some people had unusually difficult commutes to work or could not get even get to work.  Other people had to deal with the fact that their children’s school closed and had to arrange for care on Monday and Tuesday.

I have attached a picture of my daughters Abby (6) and Sarah (4) who spent the morning with their father (my husband grew up in Wisconsin and loves cold snowy weather and I grew up in California and freeze very easily) building this “snowgirl” they named Lola. I just want to remind everyone that inconvenience is temporary but memories are forever How often do two little girls from Memphis get to spend the mourning with their father building a life sized “snowgirl”?

I want to welcome Megan Hoffman, RN back from her mission trip,
to the Dominican Republic.  Megan is a nurse practitioner
student who has been following me in clinic the past 6 weeks.  During
her tour of duty Megan was stationed in the Dominican Republic where she treated local villagers as well as Haitian victims of the recent
earthquake who were evacuated to The Domincan Republic for needed Medical care.  Megan recently commented on what struck her the most. “The patients were so appreciative of our help.  Even the people who needed the care of specialists thanked us profusely even though all we could do was tell
them they needed care from someone else.  The lack of available safe
drinking water was also shocking.  We were telling people to drink water
so they would not get dehydrated but we knew how difficult it was to
find safe drinking water, something Americans can take for granted.”

Megan Hoffman is a Registered Nurse who works at the Saint Jude Medical Center.  She is also currently enrolled in the Nurse Practitioner
program at Union University-Germantown campus.

Researchers may have solved the mystery of what makes some babies vulnerable to sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, which kills more than 2,300 babies a year.Infants who died of SIDS had low levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that helps the brainstem regulate breathing, temperature, sleeping, waking and other automatic functions, according to an autopsy study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Serotonin normally helps babies respond to high carbon-dioxide levels during sleep by helping them wake up and shift their head position to get fresh air, says senior author Hannah Kinney of Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston.

When babies are placed face down, their exhaled carbon dioxide may pool in loose bedding, where it can be breathed back in, Kinney says.

Normally, babies sense high carbon-dioxide levels automatically and wake up, she says. Babies who don’t respond appropriately, however, may never wake up.

“This could have a huge impact,” says Rachel Moon, a leading SIDS researcher at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

Researchers performed autopsies on 35 infants who died of SIDS, comparing chemicals in their brainstems with those found in seven babies who died unexpectedly of known causes and five infants who died from other chronic problems related to a lack of oxygen, the study says.

Serotonin levels were 26% lower in the tissue of babies who died from SIDS, the study says.

Doctors eventually hope to use their discovery to screen babies for serotonin problems and find a way to protect them, says co-author David Paterson, also of Harvard and Children’s Hospital. Those developments are still years away, he says.

The study confirms the importance of safe infant-sleeping practices, says Moon, who adds that babies who have normal serotonin levels could still die as a result of risky practices, such as loose bedding.

The Back to Sleep campaign, begun in 1994, helped to cut SIDS deaths in half, although deaths have not declined further in the past decade, Kinney says.