Apparent Life-Threatening Event (ALTE) Being specialists of emergencies we are facile with managing events that have the potential to threaten a person’s life. It is interesting, then, that when a child presents to the ED with an Apparent Life-Threatening Event…
Pediatric Cholelithiasis After feeling the synapses in my brain start to misfire while contemplating the multitude of potential medical problems and drug interactions that my adult patients present with, I relish being able to evaluate a pediatric patient who has…
Omphalitis – Is that a normal umbilical stump or something serious? Certainly one of the most challenging (and either stimulating or completely terrifying) aspects of emergency medicine is how the seemingly innocuous can belie the sinister and devastating. For example,…
Subtle Signs of Pediatric Heart Failure For anyone who spends time in the Adult ED, signs and symptoms of heart failure become rather conspicuous. The increased work of breathing, the JVD, the significant lower extremity edema are noted prior to…
Pediatric Lymphadenopathy As has been highlighted in prior Morsels, our job in the Ped ED is to use our expert skills to pick out the needles of significant disease from amongst the large haystack of benign conditions. Lymphadenopathy occurring in…
The modern era of vaccinations (Prevnar and HiB) have drastically reduced the risk of serious bacterial infections in our young febrile patients. But, unfortunately, Urinary Tract Infections (UTI) are not affected by the modern vaccines and, therefore must still be…
Fontan Complications As more and more children are having successful surgical procedures to compensate for congenital heart disease, the likelihood that one of these post-operative heart patients will present to your ED increases. It is necessary for us to stay…