Pediatrics

Four out of 10 mothers surveyed began feeding their infants solid food when they were only 4 months old and their still-developing bodies weren't able to process it -- and more than half the moms said they had been advised to do so by a medical professional.  Those are the findings of a survey released Monday by the journal Pediatrics. Considering that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology all recommend that parents wait to introduce solid food until their babies are about 6 months old, the results suggest that many parents -- along with the doctors and nurses they rely on -- are woefully out of step with the latest medical advice.  Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent questionnaires to thousands of pregnant women and invited them to take part in the Infant Feeding Practices Study II . Then they checked in with them when their babies were 2, 3 and 4 months old. The responses included in the Pediatrics study were from 1,334 mothers.  Overall, 539 of those mothers -- or 40.4% -- said they started feeding their babies solid food before they turned 4 months old. Those foods included yogurt, tofu, infant cereal, fruits and vegetables, peanut butter, eggs, fish, chicken, meat and even French fries.  Mothers who had been feeding their babies formula were especially likely to introduce solid foods before the four-month mark,...

Four out of 10 mothers surveyed began feeding their infants solid food when they were only 4 months old and their still-developing bodies weren't able to process it -- and more than half the moms said they had been advised to do so by a medical professional.  Those are the findings of a survey released Monday by the journal Pediatrics. Considering that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology all recommend that parents wait to introduce solid food until their babies are about 6 months old, the results suggest that many parents -- along with the doctors and nurses they rely on -- are woefully out of step with the latest medical advice.  Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent questionnaires to thousands of pregnant women and invited them to take part in the Infant Feeding Practices Study II . Then they checked in with them when their babies were 2, 3 and 4 months old. The responses included in the Pediatrics study were from 1,334 mothers.  Overall, 539 of those mothers -- or 40.4% -- said they started feeding their babies solid food before they turned 4 months old. Those foods included yogurt, tofu, infant cereal, fruits and vegetables, peanut butter, eggs, fish, chicken, meat and even French fries.  Mothers who had been feeding their babies formula were especially likely to introduce solid foods before the four-month mark,...

The new chickenpox vaccine has won endorsement from the nation's largest group of pediatricians. The American Academy of Pediatricians recommended earlier this month that Varivax be administered to all children ages 12 months to 18 months and to all children 13 and younger who have not had the disease.

During the first half of the 20th century, pediatricians generally believed that children's eye problems were largely self-corrective - that a child would grow out of his or her crossed eyes or poor vision. But they were wrong. Unless a vision problem is detected and corrected early, the child will have vision problems in that eye for the rest of his or her life. Subsequent studies have shown that 2% to 5% of preschool children have vision problems, many of them not apparent. In the late 1940s, a small group of physicians began to recognize this problem.

Watching just a short bit of the wildly popular kids TV show "SpongeBob SquarePants" has been known to give many parents headaches. Psychologists have now found that a brief exposure to SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward and the rest of the crew also appears to dampen preschoolers' brain power. Angeline Lillard and Jennifer Peterson, both of the University of Virginia's department of psychology, wanted to see whether watching fast-paced television had an immediate influence on kids' executive function -- skills including attention, working memory, problem solving and delay of gratification that are associated with success in school.

Asmall girl is brought to the doctor by her mother because she is complaining of pain in her "private area." After asking some questions, the doctor, who suspects vaginal lesions, says he'll have to take a closer look, possibly doing a pelvic exam. The mother is gripped with fear. How will this small girl endure such a grown-up exam? The doctor explains the procedure to the girl, who begins to cry.

Dana Dickey could tell something was wrong with her normally energetic 4-year-old son, Devon, as soon as she arrived at his day-care center on a recent afternoon. "His eyes were swollen, his nose was running and he had a fever," the Northridge mother said. "The teacher said he was lethargic all day." Clearly, the preschooler was coming down with a cold.

The city Fire Department helicopter that crashed, killing 11-year-old Norma Vides and three rescue workers, was part of a countywide emergency system that relies on speed to ferry critically injured children for treatment at one of nine pediatric trauma centers.

Sitting in the cluttered quarters of what will become her new office, Dr. Gloria Hierro searches for the words she will say to the man whose pediatrics practice she inherits Friday. "I hope he won't slip out quietly," she says of Dr. Konrad Ulich, who will conclude a career that spanned more than 40 years when he bids goodbye to the staff of Facey Medical Group. With only a few days remaining as colleagues, however, Hierro acknowledges the moment will arrive too soon.

The city Fire Department helicopter that crashed Monday, killing 11-year-old Norma Vides-Anaya and three rescue workers, was part of a countywide emergency system that requires critically injured children in the San Fernando, east San Gabriel and Antelope valleys to be taken by helicopter to distant trauma centers.

Doctors should give underage teenagers prescriptions for emergency contraceptives like Plan B before they start having sex instead of waiting until a young patient's "plan A" goes awry, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a new policy statement. It says doctors should also counsel teens on the various options for emergency birth control as part of an overall strategy to reduce teen pregnancy. The academy is issuing the new position paper, published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics, as physicians and other health experts struggle to reduce the nation's high birthrate among adolescents.

It's among every parent's worst nightmares: You turn your back for just a second, and suddenly your child is in the middle of the street. According to a new study, those worries are not unfounded: Jaywalking and darting into the street are the most common reasons children are struck by vehicles, according to a study released at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans. More than 5,000 Americans of all ages are struck and killed by cars every year, and many more accidents lead to significant head injuries.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has shifted its official position on the contentious issue of infant circumcision, stating Monday that the medical benefits of the procedure for baby boys outweigh the small risks. In its first new policy statement on the issue since 1999, the academy said that circumcision reduced risks of urinary tract infections in infants and of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases later in life - and that the complications associated with the procedure were infrequent and mostly minor.

Re "Perhaps the kindest cut of all?," Opinion, Aug. 12 Like most apologists for routine circumcision, Charlotte Allen populates her argument with studies suggesting modest reductions in viral infection rates and negligible differences in penile sensory function. The proper legal and moral ground on this issue does not rest on statistics. It rests on the most basic principle of human rights: A person is entitled to his or her body, and any structural or functional operation performed without consent or without a compelling medical need is unacceptable.

Women who reported having had a fever during pregnancy were more likely to give birth to a baby who would later be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or a development delay, says a major new study. But the babies of women who treated their fevers with medication fared no worse than babies whose mothers recalled having suffered no fevers at all. The findings, wrote the authors,  "suggest that anti-fever medication used to control fever during pregnancy can reduce or eliminate" the apparent link between maternal fever and autism.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius visited a health clinic in downtown Los Angeles on Monday and announced more than $9 million in funding to help medical students repay school loans if they agree to work in underserved areas. Sebelius said the program will encourage more students to pursue careers in family medicine and will help relieve a shortage of primary care doctors. "Most Americans who live in underserved areas don't have access to basic care," she said during the visit to Eisner Pediatric and Family Medical Center.

Los Angeles County health officials Friday abandoned their proposal to close the obstetric, pediatric and neonatal wards at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after belatedly discovering that the move would have cost them $29 million in government aid. The county Department of Health Services made the announcement just three days after releasing plans for an Oct. 18 public hearing on the controversial recommendations -- the final step in a two-month process.

Though the absence of familiar cough and cold medications has been upsetting for many families, parents may take some comfort in the fact that doctors didn't consider them all that effective in the first place. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently determined that the medicines should not be given to children under 4, and the American Academy of Pediatrics says they aren't effective in children under 6. Cough and cold medications contain at least one of four types of active ingredients: antitussives, marketed for cough relief; decongestants; expectorants, marketed to clear mucus; and antihistamines, which have been proven to relieve allergy symptoms but not the symptoms of colds.

Worried that your children aren't getting enough sleep? You're not alone. As one prominent educational psychologist put it, “physicians and writers on school hygiene agree that children are likely to receive less sleep than is needful to them.” That assessment was offered way back in 1913, and it came from Lewis Terman, who went on to develop the Stanford-Binet IQ test. Terman certainly wasn't right about everything , but his concern for sleep-deprived kids tapped into a longstanding source of parental angst.

It will either disappear into the rubbish heap of well-meaning but ill-timed social treatises or mark the beginning of a new age of activism by the physicians who care for the nation's children: the American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday issued a technical report linking "toxic stress" in childhood to a lifetime of mental, intellectual and physical ills, and called on pediatricians "to catalyze fundamental change in early childhood policy and...