Members of the Pediatric News Editorial Advisory Board share some of the events and findings of 2017 that they believe have or will have the most impact on pediatric practice.
Francis Rushton Jr., MD, practiced pediatrics in Beaufort, S.C. for 32 years, and currently is the medical director of S.C. Quality through Technology and Innovation in Pediatrics (QTIP), funded by the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Francis Rushton Jr.
Dropping the human papillomavirus (HPV) regimen to two shots from three shots, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appears to have really improved uptake of HPV immunization.
Preventive oral health in the pediatrician’s office is not really a new recommendation from 2017; we have been talking about fluoride varnish for over a decade. What is new is that we gradually are seeing fluoride varnish move into practice, up from 1,000 applications in pediatric offices in 2011 to close to 20,000 applications in South Carolina alone.
Pediatricians are being asked to screen more and more. We’re asked to do developmental screening, postpartum depression screening, autism screening, behavioral health screening, social determinants of health screening, parental concerns screening, etc. As a result, we now have multiple different screens with different schedules. The Survey of Well-Being of Young Children screening tool does it all – one screen at each preschool well visit from birth to age 5 years.
A different approach is to use CHADIS (Child Health and Development Interactive System), a for-profit venture where all the screens are loaded electronically.
Dr. Howard Smart
Howard Smart, MD, is chairman of pediatrics at Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group, San Diego.
The switch to a two-dose schedule for HPV vaccination has improved both acceptance of the vaccine and the likelihood of timely completion of the HPV series.
Kelly Curran, MD, MA, is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, practicing adolescent medicine.
Dr. Kelly Curran
The news from Australia is that the older meningitis B vaccine (MeNZB) provides some protection against Neisseria gonorrhoeae, as reported in the Lancet (2017 July 10. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736[17]31449-6)! The newer version of the meningitis B vaccine Bexsero also contains the same outer membrane vesicle antigen. Given increasing bacterial resistance – and pan-resistant gonorrhea organisms already in some parts of the world – this is exciting news for the future!
The increased use of the reverse screening algorithm for syphilis is exciting. Although this has been “available” for several years, increasingly more physicians/laboratories are using this in practice. Our academic center – in a relatively high prevalence area for syphilis – recently switched to this screening method.
M. Susan Jay, MD, is a professor of pediatrics and section chief of adolescent medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and program director of adolescent health and medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, both in Milwaukee.
Dr. M. Susan Jay
In adolescent medicine, the addition of long-acting reversible contraceptives has been wonderful as an aid to both menstrual management and contraception. Specifically, Liletta, a new IUD that is smaller in size and remains in place for 5 years as well as being considerably more cost effective, has changed care for adolescent females.
Suzanne C. Boulter, MD, is adjunct professor of pediatrics and community and family medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H.
Dr. Suzanne C. Boulter
I was very impressed with the recent American Academy of Pediatrics policy on human trafficking published in Pediatrics (2017 November. doi: 10.1542/peds.2017-3138), and think this is a new area of knowledge of which pediatricians need to be aware.
With all the news and social media about sexual misconduct by persons in power, I’m a bit concerned that there could be a fallout on pediatricians performing appropriate examinations on their patients that could be interpreted as something else.