Welcome to Paediatric Pearls!
This is a site aimed at supporting the continuing professional development (CPD) of health professionals working with children.
It is put together by a UK general paediatric consultant ably assisted and kept on her toes by bright-eyed, enthusiastic registrars (paediatricians in training) who ask questions the majority of which she can’t possibly answer without consulting the evidence-base.
The site receives no funding, I pay for the hosting personally and there is no advertising other than Google sponsored links which come up when you use the Google Search box in the top right corner of the site. We do not control Google ads content and our editorial content is free of any commercial influence. There are references to trade names of drugs but I do not intend to direct your prescribing habits. Please click here for the site’s privacy and confidentiality policy.
The format is blog-shaped. We now produce one PDF digest per month aimed at both our local General Practioners (GPs) and our Emergency Department (ED) junior doctors. These monthly digests are downloadable directly from the side bar on the right of the screen. The text box snippets are often backed up with more extensive information and resources in the blog pages. Please use the Search function in the top right hand corner if you want to look to see if we have featured a particular topic. I welcome comments in various places all over the site and moderate them all myself. General comments can be left here or below, comments on specific topics are most useful if they are left after the relevant blog post. Click here for a guide to the “Netiquette” of leaving comments on the blog.
The Paediatric Pearls blog including monthly PDFs is here
Disclaimer: We work very hard to check the evidence for all the topics we write about but, like anyone else, we can make mistakes and medical evidence is continually updated. I take no responsibility for any decisions you may make by blindly following anything written here. We offer it all as food for thought only; feel free to add your comments.
January’s Digest PDFs are published!
January 2012 edition
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Do you know your valgus from your varus? Or your myclonic epilepsy from your sleep myoclonus? A link this month to new asthma patient information leaflets and some reminders of NICE’s “Do not do recommendations” in feverish children. Also the BSACI egg allergy guideline. Please leave comments, questions or suggestions on the blog. |
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Page last updated: 30th January 2012
Dear Julia
Hope u r keeping well. Very useful PDF to refresh knowledge.
Varus deformities in Rickets takes longer time to revert back to normal, so in such cases do we still have to rule out Blounts disease in children > 3yrs , who was previously diagnosed as vit D deficiency ??
Cheers
Radha
Good to hear from you Radha. I hope India is suiting you. Interesting to see the pathology is similar in some ways! I am going to ask one of the paediatric orthopaedic surgeons at the Royal London Hospital to answer your question. It seems unfair that children should have both pathologies but if you are in an area of very high rickets prevalence then may be it is possible.
(Comment is with reference to the January 2012 PDF available from the right of the screen.)
Hi Julia,
Its always a pleasure reading articles from Paediatric Pearls. I find them very informative. I have a question. I have heard that oral prednisolone can also be used for croup (1mg/kg- if I remeber correctly). I have never seen this used. In the AE dept I worked in the past- we’ve always used dexamethasone. I am not sure how true this is. I would be gratfeul for your comment.
many thanks
Dr S Hussain
Gp
The BNFc suggests that 1-2mg/kg prednisolone is appropriate to give in croup “prior to sending the child to hospital”. This would be easier to give/prescribe I think in general practice than the oral dexamethasone which comes in very large bottles. Either wears off after a while so our practice in the ED is to observe them for 2-3 hours post corticosteroid administration and if they present in the evening we tend to admit them overnight. The Cochrane work suggests that dexamethasone is less likely to lead to readmission than prednisolone. As far as corticosteroids in croup go, I’ve only ever used dexamethasone (and nebulised budesonide years ago which works but is more expensive than dex and no better).
Julia
(discussion around http://www.paediatricpearls.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/November-2011.pdf)
Julia
adorable work
I love the links provided through the newsletters,great learning opportunity
thank u for taking the pain in summarising the lengthy nice guidelines
Radha
Dear Julia
I came upon your website whilst researching minor head injuries in children
it is a really excellent site and i have now added the site to my favourites
Articles seem practical evidenced , relevant and easily digestible
keep up the good work
kr
Judy davis
Julia, this is awesome. Thanks for getting in touch. It will become a prominent link on gp-training.net. Do keep going, and developing! Let me know if I can be of any help. Do get back in touch so we can converse.
Best wishes
Brad
Dear Julia,
It was very pleasant to stumble upon this website,it is a very useful tool.I don’t know if you remember me but I was your SHO in Whipps Cross Hospital when you were registrar ,some where in 2000-2001 and have special memories of those days.I am now an attending Peaditrician in the US now .I will visit this site and stay in touch.This is really good.
Warm Regards
William Chinery
Thanks for your message William and good luck in the States. As you can see, I haven’t moved very far!
Julia
Julia
Following our telephone conversation a few weeks ago about a patient, I have been looking at the website regularly. Really informative and practical advice. I’ll spread the word amongst my colleagues.
Regards
Amish
Julia this is great, i find it better than a book in some ways, i hope you can continue with this & make a large e-library, i will recommend this to my own GP in enfield who was asking me questions yesterday when i visited him for my own problem. Also i like the idea that we can access this free from anywhere in the world. I’m sure with time you will find ways to make it even more user friendly. Well done.
Salman.
Julia, I think the website is fabulous. It’s informative, interesting and fun! Well done! I look forward to keeping updated with pearls. Brilliant!
Thanks Anna and thank you for your professional dietetic input into the text box on infant formulas in October’s Paediatric Pearls. I didn’t know parents can use Nesquik as flavouring for the amino acid or extensively hydrolysed milks as an alternative to vanilla essence drops but I see there’s a whole discussion on Mumsnet on how to flavour your baby’s Nutramigen or Neocate!
Hi Julia
I am impressed with your effort and persistence. This is nice.
You may consider how to directt he reader to the topics that they want to read.
When I go to the website, I would probably want to read something that I dont know.
Have you considered a list of keywords, which link to to specific editions?
e.g. Tinea Capitis….’Click’ then go to the right section?
I can see there are some cases quoted
Have you considered put them on a section called ‘case history’ with a keyword attached to it
e.g.
Case history 1 – Tina capitis
Case history 2 – Perrorbital cellulitis with complication caverous sinus thrombosis
These could become an ‘e-library’ and who knows, you may find a nice publisher to publish it!
Ashraf is quite keen to collect cases, get students, or SHO to write them up.
Maybe something you can consider with the paediatricpearls.
Well done
John
Thank you John. There is a tag cloud on the right which admittedly looks like a jumble of random words in random fonts but will actually provide the search you were suggesting. The size of the word reflects how many times it has been tagged on the site. I need to tidy that section up a bit. There is also a search function at the top right. I like the idea of case histories; they could just go into the blog bit as comments linked to a topic we’ve featured. Amutha is at the moment trying to get the SHOs involved in a “6 week check” series for the GPs so I’ll get them to do that first if I may.