Pediatrics is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until the age of 18. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends people seek pediatric care through the age of 21, but some pediatric subspecialists continue to care for adults up to 25. Worldwide age limits of pediatrics have been trending upward year after year. A medical doctor who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician, or paediatrician. The word pediatrics and its cognates mean "healer of children," derived from the two Greek words: παῖς and ἰατρός. Pediatricians work in clinics, research centers, universities, general hospitals and children's hospitals, including those who practice pediatric subspecialties.
Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be problems with sensation, vision, hearing, and speaking. Often, babies with cerebral palsy do not roll over, sit, crawl or walk as early as other children of their age. Other symptoms include seizures and problems with thinking or reasoning, each of which occur in about one-third of people with CP. While symptoms may get more noticeable over the first few years of life, underlying problems do not worsen over time.
Speech disorders or speech impairments are a type of communication disorder in which normal speech is disrupted. This can mean fluency disorders like stuttering, cluttering or lisps. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute. Speech skills are vital to social relationships and learning, and delays or disorders that relate to developing these skills can impact individuals function. For many children and adolescents, this can present as issues with academics. Speech disorders affect roughly 11.5% of the US population, and 5% of the primary school population. Speech is a complex process that requires precise timing, nerve and muscle control, and as a result is susceptible to impairments. A person who has a stroke, an accident or birth defect may have speech and language problems.
Spina bifida /ˌspaɪnə ˈbɪfɪdə/ is a birth defect in which there is incomplete closing of the spine and the membranes around the spinal cord during early development in pregnancy. There are three main types: spina bifida occulta, meningocele and myelomeningocele. Meningocele and myelomeningocele may be grouped as spina bifida cystica. The most common location is the lower back, but in rare cases it may be in the middle back or neck.
The Moro reflex is an infantile reflex that develops between 28 and 32 weeks of gestation and disappears at 3–6 months of age. It is a response to a sudden loss of support and involves three distinct components:
- spreading out the arms (abduction)
- pulling the arms in (adduction)
- crying (usually)
Neonatology is a subspecialty of pediatrics that consists of the medical care of newborn infants, especially the ill or premature newborn. It is a hospital-based specialty and is usually practised in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The principal patients of neonatologists are newborn infants who are ill or require special medical care due to prematurity, low birth weight, intrauterine growth restriction, congenital malformations, sepsis, pulmonary hypoplasia, or birth asphyxia.
bibic is a small charitable organization based in the United Kingdom that supports children, young people and their families deal with a number of different conditions. The charity was founded by the late Keith Pennock who had a daughter with a learning disability. The work was derived from Glenn Doman's The Institutes for The Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP) in Philadelphia, USA.
Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of neurological disorders that affect the development of the nervous system, leading to abnormal brain function which may affect emotion, learning ability, self-control, and memory. The effects of neurodevelopmental disorders tend to last for a person's lifetime.
Neural tube defects (NTDs) are a group of birth defects in which an opening in the spine or cranium remains from early in human development. In the third week of pregnancy called gastrulation, specialized cells on the dorsal side of the embryo begin to change shape and form the neural tube. When the neural tube does not close completely, an NTD develops.
Fetal surgery also known as antenatal surgery, prenatal surgery, is a growing branch of maternal-fetal medicine that covers any of a broad range of surgical techniques that are used to treat congenital abnormalities in fetuses who are still in the pregnant uterus. There are three main types: open fetal surgery, which involves completely opening the uterus to operate on the fetus; minimally invasive fetoscopic surgery, which uses small incisions and is guided by fetoscopy and sonography; and percutaneous fetal therapy, which involves placing a catheter under continuous ultrasound guidance.
The Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) was introduced in 1967 to identify young children, up to age six, with developmental problems. A revised version, Denver II, was released in 1992 to provide needed improvements. These screening tests provide information about a range of ages during which normally developing children acquire certain abilities and skills. By comparing a child’s development to the developmental age ranges in this tool, it allows providers to identify young children with developmental problems so that they can be referred for help.
Developmental coordination disorder (DCD), also known as developmental motor coordination disorder, developmental dyspraxia or simply dyspraxia, is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired coordination of physical movements as a result of brain messages not being accurately transmitted to the body. Deficits in fine or gross motor skills movements interfere with activities of daily living. It is often described as disorder in skill acquisition, where the learning and execution of coordinated motor skills is substantially below that expected given the individual's chronological age. Difficulties may present as clumsiness, slowness and inaccuracy of performance of motor skills. It is also often accompanied by difficulty with organisation and/or problems with attention, working memory and time management.
The Communication Function Classification System (CFCS) for individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) is a five-level classification system which began development at Michigan State University and currently under further refinement at the University of Kentucky. The research, organized and conducted by Dr. Mary Jo Cooley Hidecker, Ph.D., CCC-A/SLP, follows two widely used classification systems for cerebral palsy: the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) and the Manual Ability Classification System (MACS). Dr. Ray Kent of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Dr. Peter Rosenbaum of McMaster University, and Dr. Nigel Paneth of Michigan State University are also an integral part of this research.
The MOMS Trial was a clinical trial that studied treatment of a birth defect called myelomeningocele, which is the most severe form of spina bifida. The study looked at prenatal and postnatal surgery to repair this defect. The first major phase concluded that prenatal surgery had strong, long-term benefits and some risks.
Spinal disease refers to a condition impairing the backbone. These include various diseases of the back or spine ("dorso-"), such as kyphosis. Dorsalgia refers to back pain. Some other spinal diseases include spinal muscular atrophy, ankylosing spondylitis, lumbar spinal stenosis, spina bifida, spinal tumors, osteoporosis and cauda equina syndrome.
Dr. John F. Sarwark is Martha Washington Foundation Professor of Pediatric Orthopedics at Lurie Children's Hospital; Former Head, Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery, Lurie Children's Hospital; and Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois.
Karin Marie Muraszko is Julian T. Hoff Professor and chair of the department of neurosurgery at the University of Michigan. She is the first woman to head a neurosurgery department at any medical school in the US. She specializes in brain and spinal cord abnormalities. She has a spinal cord abnormality, spina bifida.
Pamela Evans is a British author who is also trained as a medical doctor and a published academic.
Wladimir Wertelecki is a Pediatrician and Medical Geneticist who in 1974 established one of the first free-standing Departments of Medical Genetics at the new South Alabama University College of Medicine in Mobile, Alabama, U.S.A. Since 1996 and following his retirement as Chairman and Emeritus Professor of Medical Genetics, Pediatrics and Pathology, he continues his investigations of developmental anomalies and their prevention as Project Scientist at the Department of Pediatrics, University of California San Diego. Since 1996, his research focused mainly on alcohol and ionizing radiation impacts on congenital anomalies. He is the author over 135 scientific reports. In 2000, he established the OMNI-Net Ukraine Programs to investigate reproductive risks posed by exposures to alcohol and Chornobyl ionizing radiation. OMNI-Net Ukraine established a population-based registry for the epidemiological surveillance of congenital anomalies and qualified to become full member of EUROCAT, a network of over 38 such registries across Europe. OMNI-Net Ukraine is the sole full member of EUROCAT conducting such investigations in regions formerly ruled by the USSR. OMNI-Net Ukraine also implements a variety of collaborative investigations with experts from the UCSD, Emory and other Universities sponsored by the Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders funded by then National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIH). Many components of the OMNI-Net Ukraine programs introduced by Wertelecki, were previously implemented in Alabama. He established a regional network of clinics across southern Alabama and West Florida and in 1978 organized the Southern Genetic Group which expanded into the South-Eastern Regional Genetics Group enhancing genetic services in six states. Wertelecki also contributed to the efforts by local Native-Americans to gain Federal Recognition as Native-Americans in Alabama. In 1992, he made a presentation to the US Senate regarding the reproductive risks posed by the Chornobyl radiation. Following an initial sponsorship by USAID, he established OMNI-Net programs in Ukraine, a not-for-profit network to provide training and to engage Ukrainian professionals to conduct monitoring of the frequency of birth defects. OMNI-Net teams promptly detected an epidemic of spina bifida and associated malformations collectively known as neural tube defects (NTD). The frequency of these malformations and the associated child mortality are persistently the highest in Europe. From the start, OMNI-Net advocates for Ukrainian authorities to introduce folic acid fortification programs, a measure that will significantly reduce the epidemic and related mortality. Flour fortification with folic acid is safe, effective and affordable as shown by implementations adopted by 80 countries. Currently, a legislative initiative to establish an NTD prevention program is under consideration by the Ukrainian National Parliament. OMNI-Net has also documented that thousands of pregnant women continue to accumulate in their bodies, through eating, drinking, and inhaling, radioactive elements (nuclides). Whole body counts of incorporated Cs-137 by pregnant women are much higher than in women residing away from Chornobyl radiation impacted regions. OMNI-Net teams seek national and international partners to elucidate the inherent risks of such facts. Although some reports state that Chornobyl radiation is not biologically harmful, OMNI-Net researchers note that such studies did not include pregnant women with known levels of incorporated nuclides. The association of incorporated levels of Cs-137 with prevalence of birth defects remains to be clarified. Another frequent known cause of birth defects in Ukraine is alcohol consumption by pregnant women. Since 2006, OMNI-Net has implemented an international initiative focused on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. In summary, OMNI-Net is effectively a catalist for joint scientific collaborations of Ukrainian and International investigations.
Robert Bransby Zachary was an English paediatric surgeon who spent the majority of his career at Sheffield Children's Hospital. He was an expert on the treatment of spina bifida and hydrocephalus.
