Transformational Pediatrics features interviews with physicians and researchers at Children’s Mercy Kansas City who are transforming pediatric care through genomic medicine, personalized therapeutics, health services and outcomes research, and innovations in health care delivery.
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Enteral Connectors: Improving Quality and Safety
Michael Smith and Ruba A. Abdelhadi
All syringes and tubings used for enteral feeding and medication admission are changing this year.
This change will impact ALL families and clinicians caring for children with feeding tubes.
This change will prevent accidental connections to IV catheters.
The following changes will occur: the end piece of the feeding tubes where the feeding bag tubing connects, the feeding bag pointed end and the syringes used to put medicines in the tubes.
Ruba Abdelhadi, MD is here to discuss all the changes and what it means to your family. -
Gender Pathway Services: Charting a Course for Transgender Youth
Michael Smith and Jill Jacobson
Gender dysphoria, if left untreated, has a 40 to 50 percent attempted suicide rate.
Medical, social and psychological problems all need to be addressed and often dealt with simultaneously.
Children’s Mercy has developed the new Gender Pathway Services (GPS) Clinic to help manage these issues.
Based in the Division of Endocrinology, the team provides interdisciplinary family-centered services for transgender, gender-variant, and gender-questioning patients. This is the only center of its kind in the Midwest and one of only a handful in the country.
Specialists that are part of the clinic include: endocrinology, psychology, adolescent medicine and social work.
New patients receive a psychological evaluating to help ensure the mental health needs of the family and patient are continuously supported.
Jill Jacobson, MD is here to discuss Gender dysphoria. -
Genomics of Newborns: The Value of Rapid Genetic Testing in the NICU
Michael Smith and Josh E. Petrikin
Children’s Mercy Kansas City is one of four sites participating in Newborn Sequencing In Genomic Medicine and Public HealTh (NSIGHT), which is sponsored by the NIH along with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).
NSIGHT is designed to explore the implications, challenges and opportunities associated with the possible use of genomic sequence information in the newborn period.
The emphasis of the Children’s Mercy NSIGHT project is gaining rapid access to genetic diagnostic information so that clinical care can be managed effectively for acutely ill neonates.
Early evidence of the feasibility of this approach was recently published by Children’s Mercy investigators in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
Conclusions from this study suggest that STAT-Seq, a rapid whole-genome sequencing test developed at Children’s Mercy, has the potential to alter clinical management or genetic counseling and provides a novel framework for implementing precision medicine in a level 4 NICU or PICU.
Josh Petrikin, MD is here to discuss Genomics of Newborns. -
GOLDILOKS: Getting Medication Dosage “Just Right” for Children
Michael Smith and J Steven Leeder
Why does one child respond to a medication, but another doesn’t?
What are the factors that influence how a child responds to a medication and how do those differ from adults?
Despite all the talk about “big pharma” and research, very little has been done about testing the safety and efficacy of medications for children.
Even with new FDA regulations in place, pediatric labeling is decreasing, not increasing.
The Clinical Pharmacology, Toxicology and Personalized Therapeutics program at Children’s Mercy is the largest and most comprehensive pediatric pharmacology program in North America and has been at the forefront of advocating and advancing research.
The GOLDILOKS initiative acknowledges that individual children are not small average adults; dosing of medications must include factors that make each child unique in order to deliver the dose of medication that is “just right” for each individual child.
Children’s Mercy faculty (trained in a pediatric subspecialty and clinical pharmacology) are looking at how this applies in several subspecialty areas including cardiology, infectious disease, asthma/allergy, rheumatology, gastroenterology, neonatology and hematology/oncology.
Steve Leeder, PharmD, PhD is here to discuss the best ways to keep your child and their medications safe. -
Image Gently: Reducing Radiation Exposure in Children
Michael Smith and Douglas C. Rivard
Children’s bodies are more sensitive to radiation so it is imperative that they are exposed to the least amount of radiation as possible to avoid a lifetime of cumulative damage.
Research conducted at Children’s Mercy showed the hospital uses up to 80% less radiation than community imaging centers for some procedures.
The hospital’s protocols are based on the child’s size and weight, and take into consideration the body part to be imaged.
In addition, a PhD medical physicist helps calibrate imaging equipment to provide high quality images using the least amount of radiation.
In addition to following national Image Gently guidelines, Children’s Mercy offers additional services such as Child Life specialists, sedation and anesthesia to help keep children calm so high quality images are achieved without the need to rescan.
Doug Rivard, DO is here to discuss how Children’s Mercy is leading the way toward reducing the radiation your child is exposed to and answer any questions about keeping your child safe.
