Dog bites can leave kids with emotional scars too
(Reuters Health) – When animals attack, some kids might develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
That’s the message of a new study that followed kids in China after they came to the emergency room (ER) for animal bites – the cause of millions of injuries every year.
Some people suffer from PTSD after experiencing an event that puts them or another person in danger, such as a car accident or assault. People with PTSD often have disturbing memories and dreams of that event that may interfere with their everyday lives.
PTSD may be especially worrisome in kids, said Dr. Nancy Kassam-Adams, co-director of The Center for Pediatric Traumatic Stress at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, because it can interfere with their normal development. For example, if a child suffers from a traumatic event at the age when most kids learn to read, it’s a “bigger deal” for that child to need time to recover than it would be for an adult, she said.
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All kids should have cholesterol tests: study
(Reuters Health) – Tens of thousands of kids may benefit from cholesterol-lowering medication, but no one would know because screening guidelines exclude too many children, U.S. doctors said Monday.
In a report published in the journal Pediatrics, they call for screening of all children, expanding one set of current recommendations that target only those whose parents or grandparents have heart disease or high cholesterol. Another existing set of guidelines doesn’t call for screening in any children.
Screening all children would “identify a number of children who are of very significant risk of premature heart disease,” said Dr. William Neal of West Virginia University in Morgantown, who led the new study.
Neal said treating youth with cholesterol-lowering drugs, the so-called statins, would curb the risk that they went on to develop heart problems in middle age. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world.
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