Healthy Living Pediatrics Content

• Kitchen Spoons Dole Out Dangerous Overdoses

  

  Posted 6:36 PM 7/16/2010

  July 16, 2010 - Using kitchen spoons to dispense medicine to children can cause dangerous overdoses, a new study warns.

  Researchers from Greece and Boston examined 71 teaspoons and 49 tablespoons that they collected from households in the Attica region of Greece, which includes Athens, and found that the capacities of the spoons varied widely.

  Teaspoon capacity ranged from 0.08 to 0.25 of an ounce, with an average volume of 0.15 of an ounce. The (More)
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• Obese Kids Have More Reflux Disease

  

  Posted 7:18 PM 7/9/2010

  July 9, 2010 -- Obesity is a major contributor to acid reflux disease in adults, and it appears the same is true in children.

  Obese children had a 30% to 40% (More)
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• Kids See Fewer Ads for Sweets, More for Fast Food

  

  Posted 11:33 PM 7/6/2010

  July 6, 2010 -- Children are seeing fewer commercials hawking cookies, candy bars, and sugar-sweetened beverages, but more TV ads for fast-food restaurants, according to a new study published online in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

  "There have been some positive changes, but fast-food advertising went up quite a bit from 2003 to 2007," says Lisa Powell, PhD, a research professor and senior research scientist at the University of (More)
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• TV, Video Game Overload May Hurt Kids' Attention Span

  

  Posted 6:56 PM 7/6/2010

  July 6, 2010 -- Children who spend too much time playing video games and watching TV are more likely to have attention problems, a new study finds.

  Excessive television viewing has long been associated with childhood attention problems, but researchers in Iowa and Minnesota say their study is one of the first to draw similar conclusions about video games.

  The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents allow no more than two hours of screen (More)
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• Pediatricians Commonly Misdiagnose Kids

  

  Posted 3:58 PM 6/23/2010

  June 23, 2010 -- Just over half of pediatricians responding to an anonymous survey acknowledged making at least one diagnostic error a month, and just under half said that at least once a year they made errors that harmed patients.

  The survey involved 726 academic and community-based pediatricians or pediatric residents practicing in Houston or Cincinnati.

  Diagnosing viral illness as bacterial infection was the most commonly reported diagnostic error (More)
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• Kids Like Cartoon-Branded Snacks Better

  

  Posted 8:35 PM 6/21/2010

  June 21, 2010 -- Once simply the world's best-known cartoon, canine detective Scooby-Doo is now also a popular pitchman for pasta, cookies, "fruit" snacks, and other foods marketed to young children.

  SpongeBob SquarePants, Shrek, Dora the Explorer, and many other cartoon characters also do double duty selling junk food and sometimes healthy foods to kids, and new research shows why manufacturers use them.

  The study found that foods packaged with (More)
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• Limiting TV Time Makes Kids Active

  

  Posted 9:39 PM 6/15/2010

  June 15, 2010 -- Children whose parents set limits on the time their kids are allowed to watch television or spend on a computer are more likely to engage in physical activity than youngsters who are glued to screens without restriction, new research suggests.

  The study is published in the July issue of Pediatrics.

  Kids whose parents make rules (More)
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• New Guidelines on Kids' Drowning Prevention

  

  Posted 6:43 PM 5/24/2010

  May 24, 2010 -- The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued new policy guidelines calling for children as young as age 1 to receive swimming lessons, depending on how often they are exposed to water and judgments made by parents about their maturity.

  The AAP says its existing recommendation had been that most children (More)
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• Toy Dart Guns Recalled for Suffocation Risk

  

  Posted 5:48 PM 5/17/2010

  May 17, 2010 -- Nearly 2 million toy dart gun sets that have been linked to two asphyxiation deaths in the Midwest are being recalled by Charlotte, N.C.-based Family Dollar Stores, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said today.

  The China-made toys, sold exclusively at Family Dollar Stores and imported by Henry Gordy International Inc. of Plainfield, N.C., were sold nationwide from September 2005 through January 2009 and cost about (More)
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• 1-Sided Hearing Loss Lowers Language Skills

  

  Posted 10:39 PM 5/10/2010

  May 10, 2010 -- Children with hearing loss in one ear have lower speech-language scores than siblings with normal hearing, new research shows.

  A team of scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recruited 74 children from the St. Louis (More)
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