THE GAP between children's and adult palliative care services is too wide to negotiate for some young people, according to a study of the experiences of young people with life-limiting conditions and their families.
Respiratory outcomes of patients with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) range from no oxygen requirement to chronic respiratory failure. Outcomes of least severe types of BPD are well described. Limited data exist on outcomes of patients with…
Many children in the United States fail to reach their full health and developmental potential. Disparities in their health and well-being result from the complex interplay of multiple social and environmental determinants that are not adequately…
BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid arthritis is a common, disabling, autoimmune disease with significant psychiatric sequelae. AIMS: We aimed to identify the prevalence of depression and anxiety in patients with rheumatoid arthritis attending hospitals, and to…
OBJECTIVE: Mitochondrial disorders are responsible for a variety of neurological syndromes. Specific mitochondrial DNA mutations have been identified recently in some of these rare disorders. Clinical symptoms may occur in different organs to various…
Pediatric hospice has become an important service for children and their families in the past decade. In this article we present unique aspects of StarShine, the hospice of Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Length-of-service…
When treating individual patients, physicians may face difficulties using the evidence from center-based randomized control trials (RCTs) due to limitations in these studies generalizability. Therefore, they often perform their own "informal" tests…
Pediatric neurologic diseases are often associated with different kinds of sleep disruption (mainly insomnia, less frequently hypersomnia or parasomnias). Due to the key-role of sleep for development, the effort to ameliorate sleep patterns in these…
Opioids are the most effective and widely used drugs in the treatment of severe pain. They act through G protein-coupled receptors. Four families of endogenous ligands (opioid peptides) are known. The standard exogenous opioid analgesic is morphine.…
Recent studies showed an enhanced general sensitivity to painful stimuli in adult migraineurs during as well as between attacks. Yet, the influence of a prolonged pain history and potential sex differences has not been studied. We used quantitative…
The Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM) and the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) are the most commonly used measures of functional performance in children. The purpose of this study was to determine the concurrent…
Although laws such as the Patient Self-Determination Act encourage individuals to address their end-of-life treatment preferences using advance directives, the wishes of children have traditionally been ignored or, perhaps even worse, overruled.…
BACKGROUND: Parents facing the death of their child have a strong need for compassionate professional support. Care services should be based on empirical evidence, be sensitive to the needs of the families concerned, take into account the…
Terminally ill patients and their families are often referred to as being "in denial" of impending death. This study uses the qualitative method of discourse analysis to investigate the usage of the term "denial" in the contemporary hospice and…
BACKGROUND: In this paper we compare the results in an analysis of determinants of caregivers' health derived from two approaches, a structural equation model and a log-linear model, using the same data set. METHODS: The data were collected from a…
BACKGROUND: Life-sustaining medical care of patients with advanced cancer at the end of life (EOL) is costly. Patient-physician discussions about EOL wishes are associated with lower rates of intensive interventions. METHODS: Funded by the National…
BACKGROUND: When curative treatments are no longer options for patients dying of cancer, the focus of care often turns from prolonging life to promoting quality of life (QOL). Few data exist on what predicts better QOL at the end of life (EOL) for…
In the medical literature the term 'mitochondrial disorders' is to a large extent applied to the clinical syndromes associated with abnormalities of the common final pathway of mitochondrial energy metabolism, i.e. oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS).…
AIM: To describe the epidemiology of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) in the Nordic countries, to define clinical subgroups and to investigate factors predicting chronic disease. METHODS: A prospective registration was done from 1998 to…
Non-adherence to medical regimens is a ubiquitous hindrance to quality health care among adolescent transplant recipients. Identification of potentially modifiable barriers to adherence when patients are listed for organ transplant would help with…
OBJECTIVE: To explore the end-of-life experience of children with brain tumors and their families. DESIGN: Qualitative analysis of focus group interviews. SETTING: Children's Hospital, London Health Sciences Center. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-five parents…
