Medical Treatment
Fever Under Age 3
What's the best thing to do when a healthy-appearing child who is 3 to 36 months old has a fever of 102.2 or higher, with no clear source of the fever? Is it best just to treat them all with antibioti…
Acetaminophen and Liver Failure
Acetaminophen is one of the most commonly used medicines in children. One brand name, Tylenol, is known by most parents in the U.S. Often used by itself to relieve pain or to reduce fevers, it is also…
MRSA Ear Infections
MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staph aureus) is the name of a feared, antibiotic resistant, species of bacteria that can cause serious infections, especially in hospitals or in those whose immune systems…
Dark Chocolate Treats Diarrhea?
Dr. Greene's take on the wonders of dark chocolate... The medicinal use of cocoa to treat childhood diarrhea and other intestinal problems was common among the Mayans and Aztecs. Europeans began writi…
Eczema Treatment Warning
The breezy television ads for certain steroid-free eczema treatment products have always bothered me. While they don.t say anything untrue, they do incorrectly imply that this treatment is gentler a…
Who Gets Antibiotics?
Whether or not your child leaves a doctor's visit with an antibiotic prescription sometimes depends on who your doctor is as much as it depends on your child's illness. Antibiotics were among the most…
Canada Bans Adderall XR…
- and the United States does not. Adderall XR is a popular drug for treating ADHD. The active ingredients are amphetamines and dextroamphetamines. When used for ADHD, this drug has been linked to 20 k…
Acupuncture for Allergies
Nasal allergies are common in children, and appear to be getting more common all the time. In Chinese medicine, acupuncture is often used to treat allergies. People report great results, but there hav…
Help for OCD
At moments of stress, such as getting ready for bed or for school, some kids feel the need to touch certain objects, say certain words, or to wash and wash their hands. Some children have an overwhelm…
Beyond Medicine For Asthma
Changes in the home environment can be as powerful as medications in treating asthma, according to an exciting study in the September 9, 2004 New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers in the Inner-…
Pregnant and Depressed?
Health Canada has issued an August 2004 advisory that certain anti-depressant medicines taken during the third trimester of pregnancy may cause symptoms in the baby at birth. Health Canada is the coun…
Real versus Fake Acupuncture for CP
Parents are sometimes frustrated or disappointed by treatments for their children with cerebral palsy. Eager for anything that might bring improvement in this chronic condition, parents often turn to …
Simple Syrup NF to Quiet Coughs?!?
I've seen several headlines trumpeting that over-the-counter cough syrups are no more effective than water. The headlines are based on a study performed at the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine a…
Getting Un-Allergic to Antibiotics
The rise of bacterial resistance isn't the only force limiting antibiotic choices. Allergies to antibiotics have risen over the years as antibiotic use in children (and in animal agriculture) has beco…
The Best Antibiotics for Ear Infections
The 2004 American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for the treatment of ear infections includes specific recommendation for which antibiotics should be used in different situations. Most ear infection…
Strep Throat Treatment
A change may be brewing. Although strep infections are usually mild, and would often get better on their own, some untreated strep infections result in serious complications - such as rheumatic heart …
Vanilla Ear Infections/Red Hot Infections
With garden-variety ear infections (what doctors call otitis media with effusion, or OME), germ-filled fluid is present in the middle ear. Most ear infections in children are OME. We’ve known for ab…
Canada is Calming Bacteria
The tide can be turned! Canada has scored a victory in the bacteria battle. For more than a decade, the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been increasing around the world, and has appeared …
Drugs for Children who Need Them
Pediatricians who treat cancer are poised to petition the World Health Organization to add leukemia medicines for children to the WHO essential drugs list, according to a February 16, 2004 report to t…
Asthma, Steroids, Growth, and Height
If children take standard amounts of inhaled steroids to prevent asthma flare-ups, do they end up shorter than their peers? We know that conventional doses of inhaled steroids can slow the rate of gro…