Immunodeficiency and Down Syndrome We are all familiar with the major features of Down Syndrome (partially because they are distinctive and partially because tests love to have questions about them), but one that is commonly undervalued is the relative immunodeficiency…
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…
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,…
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…
Acute Mastoiditis – Conservative Management 2 Morsels ago (Yes you can mark the passage of time in “Morsels”) [HSP and Testicular Pain] we addressed some common themes of the Ped EM Morsels. This week will highlight one of these themes…
We know that all bleeding eventually stops: ideally, by means that we have imposed rather than by exhaustion of the patient’s RBC resources. We also know that the easiest, and often most efficacious, way to halt bleeding is to put…