Small children tend to stumble and fall on their heads more often since the head is proportionally much larger than the rest of the body, said Matthias Albrecht, a child pediatrician who works with a Dortmund-based accident prevention group.

But according to the child surgeon, “if a child cries out, that usually means nothing serious has happened”.

If the child is silent after a fall or even becomes unconscious, please call for an ambulance or doctor immediately. The same applies if the child starts to vomit since these symptoms could point to cerebral concussion, said Albrecht.

It is perfectly normal for children to fall down, especially when they are taking their first steps but danger arises when a baby or child slips from a high nappy-changing table.

Without prior warning, children are always learning something new. This can mean that a baby, which up until now has always be laying on its back, can suddenly flip over and tumble off the nappy-changing table.

When changing a baby’s nappy, the parent should always hold the child. Experts say a good nappy-changing table should be 85cm to 92cm tall, 55cm long and 70cm wide, and best placed in a corner where the walls provide additional protection.

]]> http://www.healthcare-article.com/fall-concerns-for-a-child/feed/ 0 http://www.healthcare-article.com/no-vaccine-effect-after-3-years/ http://www.healthcare-article.com/no-vaccine-effect-after-3-years/#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 09:52:20 +0000 R.Seven http://www.healthcare-article.com/?p=267 The vaccine for whooping cough commonly administered to the young loses its effectiveness after three years, according to the preliminary results of a new US study. The results released recently come from a survey of 15,000 children in Marin County, California, where an outbreak of the bacterial disease killed 11 infants and infected more than 8,000 people in 2010.

“When we first started having a pertussis outbreak, we assumed that this would be primarily in the unvaccinated population,” Dr David Witt, of Kaiser Permanente Medical Centre in San Rafael, California, told
a conference in Chicago, using the scientific name for the once-common childhood disease.

“What we pretty quickly identify is that the bulk of the outbreak was in fully-vaccinated children in the 8 to 12 age group,” he said. “Older kids and younger kids seemed to be pretty well protected but the age of 8 to 12 was the vast bulk of the cases.

“And when we examined that, it was correlated to being more than three years from the last vaccine booster dose,” he said, adding that many of the children did not seek care because the vaccine mitigated the symptoms. He cautioned that more research was necessary as he presented the preliminary results at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy organised by the American Society of Microbiology.

In the group of 15,000 children surveyed, doctors found 171 confirmed cases of whooping cough across all age groups, including 103 in the group of eight to 12-year-olds. These children were up to 20 times more likely to become infected than those whose last booster injection was more recent, Witt said.

He insisted, however, that parents should get their children vaccinated, saying the vaccine provided good protection for the first two to three years and appeared to mitigate the symptoms of those who became infected. The infection causes coughing fits lasting up to 10 weeks and can be fatal, especially in infants. It is commonly treated with antibiotics, which are used to reduce symptoms and prevent the spread of the disease.

The disease infects 30-to-50 million people worldwide each year and kills some 300,000, according to the US-based Centre for Disease Control (CDC). – AFP-Relaxnews

The omega-3 fatty acids in fish may lower stroke risk through their positive effects on blood pressure and cholesterol, wrote Susanna Larsson and Nicola Orsini of Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet in the journal Stroke.

Their analysis was based on 15 studies conducted in the United States, Europe, Japan and China, each of which asked people how frequently they ate fish, then followed them for between four and 30 years to see who suffered a stroke.

“I think overall, fish does provide a beneficial package of nutrients, in particular the omega-3s, that could explain this lower risk,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, a Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist whose research was included in the analysis.

“A lot of the evidence comes together suggesting that about two to three servings per week is enough to get the benefit.”

Vitamin D, selenium, and certain types of proteins in fish may also have stroke-related benefits, he added. Data for the analysis came from close to 400,000 people aged 30 to 103. Over anywhere from a few years to a few decades, about 9,400 people had a stroke. Eating three extra servings of fish each week was linked to a 6% drop in stroke risk, which translates to one fewer stroke among a hundred people eating extra fish over a lifetime. The people in each study who ate the most fish were 12% less likely to have a stroke than those that ate the least.

Mozaffarian’s report separated the effects of different kinds of fish and found that people who ate more fried fish and fish sandwiches, not surprisingly, didn’t get any stroke benefit. But the research can’t prove that adding more non-fried fish to your diet will keep you from having a stroke, Mozaffarian told Reuters Health. People “could have healthier diets in other ways, people could exercise more, people could have better education that could lead them to see their doctors more,” he added, all of which could decrease their risk of strokes.

Still, most studies have tried to take those other health and nutrition factors into account to isolate the effects of fish as much as possible – and they suggest a cause-and-effect relationship, he said. It’s likely that people who start out eating no fish or very little probably have the most to gain by putting it on their plate more often.

“You get a lot of bang for your buck when you go from low intake to moderate, a few servings per week,” Mozaffarian said. After that, the benefit from each extra serving probably goes down. Fatty fish such as salmon and herring are especially high in omega-3s, The American Heart Association recommends at least two servings of fatty fish in particular each week. – Reuters

Another chemical used as an industrial metal degreasing agent, trichloroethylene (TCE) also boosted heart risks, said the research to be presented at the Paediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Denver Colorado.

“Congenital heart disease (which occurs when the heart is malformed before birth) is a major cause of childhood death and life-long health problems,” said D. Gail McCarver, lead author of the study and pediatrics professor at Wisconsin’s Medical College.

Previous studies suggested it could be caused by chemicals in the environment. Researches collected stool samples from 135 newborn babies with the heart condition and 432 infants without it.

A full 82% of all the infants showed exposure to at lesat one of the 17 solvents measured in the study. While infants who showed exposure to ethyl benzene had four times the risk of CHD. Black infants exposed to TCE showed an eight-fold risk for the heart condition, and white infants with the traces in their stool had a two-fold higher risk, said the finding.

“This is the first report that exposure to ethyl benzene was associated with CHD,” McCarver said. Some residents of the US Gulf Coast have expressed concern about their health in the aftermath of the BP oil spill last year, though no studies have been completed yet to determine the effects of exposure to the spilled oil.

Other sources of ethyl benzene include vehicle exhaust, petrol pump vapours and cigratte smoke.
Source: AFP

The study compared 50 US heart patients who enrolled in tai chi classes to 50 who took classroom study in heart education. Physical responses were similar in both groups, but those who did tai chi showed “significant” improvements according to their answers in a questionnaire to assess their emotional state. The tai chi group also reported better “exercise self-efficacy (confidence to perform certain exercise – related activities), with increased daily activity, and related feelings of well-being compared with the education group,” said the study.

 While experts admit they do not fully understand the science behind the findings, the study offers a positive option for complementing standard medical care of people with chronic heart failure, a debilitating and progressive disease that limits a person’s ability to breathe and move.

 “Tai chi appears to be a safe alternative to low-to-moderate intensity conventional exercise training,” said lead author Gloria Yeh of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre.

“Tai chi has a good rate of adherence and may provide value in improving daily exercise, quality of life, self-efficacy and mood in frail, deconditioned patients with systolic heart failure.” Yeh is also assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Research and Education in Complimentary and Integrative Medical Therapies at Harvard Medical School.

Previous studies have suggested Tai Chi, which involves slow, circular movements and balance-shifting exercises, may be helpful to people who suffer from high blood pressure, fibromyalgia and stress.

1. Strength exercises build muscles for older adults and increase their metabolism, which helps to keep their weight and blood sugar in check.
2. Balance exercises build leg muscles, and help to prevent falls. According to the NIH, US hospitals have 300,000 admissions for broken hips each year, many involving seniors, and falling is often the cause of those fractures. Balance exercises also help the elderly stay independent by helping them to avoid the disabilities that could result from falling.
3. Stretching exercises give more freedom of movement, allowing people to be more active during their senior years. But stretching exercises alone will not improve endurance or strength.
4. Endurance exercises are any activity – walking, jogging, swimming, biking, or even raking leaves – that increases your heart rate and breathing for an extended period of time. Build up your endurance gradually, starting with as little as five minutes of activity at a time.

Liver cancer is the third most deadly cancer in the world. University vice-chancellor Professor Joseph Sung Jao-yiu said: “Every one of us has this gene called cell cycle-related kinase. The key is whether it’ll be activated and how much of it is in your body.

“During liver cancer development, the gene is abnormally activated, which in turn allows cells to grow at an abnormally high rate. It’s like awakening a long-dormant gene.” During an ongoing three-year research project scientists at the university’s Institute of Digestive

Disease found that about 70% of the 50 liver cancer patients involved in the study produced high levels of the gene. They were also more likely to die sooner than those with low levels of the gene. The scientists found that proteins uniquely present in men directly controlled the gene, which was critical for inducing processes that led to abnormal cell growth and tumor formation. This was why globally the disease was seven times more frequent in men than women in 2007, they said.

Hongkong men were three times more likely to be prone to the killer cancer than women. In 2008, out of 1,745 new cases of liver cancer, men accounted for more than 1,200. Sung said now that the gene has been proven to promote liver cancer, targeted therapy can be developed to treat it. He said he expected medication to be ready in five to 10 years.

Builders have been ordered to cover their bums and bodies – to guard against rising rates of skin cancer.
Leading medics warned that cases of the disease among Britain’s 2.4 million construction workers are now on a level with asbestos-related disease.

It follows research by a University of Manchester team which found builders – who often go topless and wear jeans which slip down – were nine times more likely to get skin cancer than other workers, with 1,000 tumours reported every year.

Construction workers are at higher risk due to long spells working in direct sunlight and ultraviolet rays reflected from surfaces. Writing in the Journal of Occupational Medicine, the experts want foremen to encourage staff to wear long-sleeved, loose-fitting shirts and suncream for protection.

Dr Henry Goodall, president of the Society of Occupational Medicine, warned: “Skin cancer can takes years to develop. Neglecting to cover up in the sun can be as dangerous as forgetting to wear a hard hat. “We need to send a clear message that the days of the topless builder are over.”

“The testes don’t work as well when you’re overweight,” according to Michael Zitzmann, an endocrinologist at Muenster University Hospital’s Institute of Reproductive Medicine in Germany. Zitzmann said a major role was played by waist size since too much belly fat was harmful and contributed to lower testosterone levels.

A deficiency of the male hormone can also lead to depression, he pointed out. In addition to a comprehensive program targeting diet, exercise and behaviour, Zitzmann said he recommends testosterone therapy for his overweight male patients because a deficiency of the hormone was also
deleterious to organs such as the liver.

What is more, correcting the deficiency fosters fat loss and muscle gain, he said. Men generally take obesity less seriously than women do, Zitzmann said, one reason being that the advertising industry presented slimness as a beauty ideal much more often to women. On men, however, a big belly can still be considered a status symbol and its bearer is regarded as a “he-man”, Zitzmann said.

According to the German Obesity Foundation, 66% of men and 51% of women in Germany are either overweight or obese. Among the best-known potential complications of excessive body fat are cardiovascular disorders, type 2 diabetes and emotional problems. Noting that in Germany, the tendency to become overweight is not decreasing, diabetologist Stephan Jacob expressed pessimism about societal developments.

“In future, we’re going to have a huge army of middle aged people supposed to carry the population pyramid but who are ill,” he said. The people in Germany most likely to be overweight are those who are poorly educated and come from low-income families, said Jacob, who is second chairman of the German
Obesity Foundation. A further challenge, Jacob said, was rectifying this group of patients’ often distorted notions of a healthy diet.

A rotavirus infection can seem like a normal upset stomach but it can lead to vomiting or diarrhea more than 20times a day. Symptoms may last up to 9days.
Rotavirus can cause symptoms such as:

• Diarrhea
• Vomiting
• Fever

All the above symptoms can lead to dehydration.

Babies with severe cases may need to go to hospital. Doctors cannot predict if your baby will have a serious case of rotavirus.

Is Your Baby Protected?

Keeping a clean home and washing your hands often are not enough to protect your baby from rotavirus. Hand soaps and other celaning products cannot kill the viru. It spreads easily and can survive for weeks on toys and household surface.

What Can I Do About Rotavirus?

Ask your doctor about a painless oral vaccine that targets 5 of the most common types of rotavirus.

Important questions as below:

What Is Rotavirus?

Rotavirus is a common stomach virus that’s very easy to get.
Symptoms include:

• Diarrhea
• Vomiting
• Fever

These symptoms can lead to serious dehydration (loss of body water).

How Can I Protect My Baby?

Fortunately there is a painless oral vaccine that targets 5 of the most common types of rotavirus that cause 95% of infections worldwide.

When Should My Baby Get The Vaccine?

Your baby should get the forst dose before 3 months of age. It’s important not to put it off.

What Should I Do Next?

Talk to your doctor about rotavirus and getting your newborn vaccinated today.