Cover coughs and sneezes:
The flu vaccine is now available and families should be making plans to get everyone in the household immunized.
“The flu vaccine is recommended for everyone older than 6 months,” says Sherman Alter, MD, medical director of the infectious disease department at Dayton Children’s Hospital. “The flu vaccine will provide children with a great deal of protection.”
Again this year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are recommending parents opt for the shot over the nasal mist.
The shot contains a dead virus; the nasal mist is a live, but weakened virus.
“In five major studies of FluMist in the 2015-16 influenza season, the mist was found to be less effective overall than the version that comes in the shot, especially with Influenza A/H1N1,” says Bethany Linegang, infection preventionist at Dayton Children’s. “Since researchers anticipate that those varieties will be the circulating strains again this year, they recommend the shot for the best protection against the flu this season.”
“Vaccines are safe and effective,” says Dr. Alter.
“There are very few side effects and they are much less severe than having the illness would be. Making sure your children are fully vaccinated not only protects them from disease, disability and death, it helps protect the rest of the community as well.”
“The majority of our flu admissions last year were infants under the age of 6 months who are too young to be vaccinated,” says Linegang.
“We can protect our most vulnerable populations, by making sure everyone in the family who can be vaccinated gets their shots on time.”
There are additional steps you can teach your children to prevent the spread of the flu and other illnesses.
Create a good lather with soap and water and wash for 20 seconds, about as long as it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice.
Hand washing:
Use a tissue, then immediately toss the tissue in the trash.
If a tissue is not available, cough or sneeze into your sleeve.
Coughing into the hand can spread germs.
Never share cups or utensils.
Eat well and get plenty of sleep:
Your immune system can fight harder when it’s strong and healthy.
If your child does get the flu, make sure you keep them home from school or day care until they are better — usually seven days after the illness starts.
Dr. Alter says the best way to treat children who have the flu is to make sure they get extra rest, drink plenty of fluids and eat light, easy-to-digest foods like applesauce.
Call your pediatrician if you have concerns about your child’s illness.
Bettye Givens KANSAS CITY, MO. — didn’t know that low-dose CT scans can catch lung cancer at its earliest, most treatable stages.
She didn’t know that they can also throw up false positives that lead to more invasive and risky follow-up tests.
She didn’t know there had been an ongoing controversy about whether the low-dose CT scans should be covered by Medicare or whether they cause more trouble than they prevent.
But Givens, from south Kansas City, knew she wanted to be tested for lung cancer, if possible, when she visited her doctor last October.
“Because I’ve smoked for so long, and I was being somewhat cautious,” Givens said.
As it turned out, Givens, 72, is exactly the sort of patient that the federal government decided in 2015 should get a low-dose CT scan, covered by Medicare: people age 55 to 77 who have a 30 “pack year” smoking history,
Students today can find it challenging to sit still and focus their mind on one particular school subject when the world around them is teaching them to multitask at an ever-increasing pace.
That’s why creating a healthy study environment for kids is now more important than ever, said Melinda Ruff, MD, a family physician with Centerville Family Medicine.
“Having the right study environment can help kids hone their focus,” said Dr. Ruff, who practices with Premier Physician Network. “They have so many outside distractions from technology, extracurricular activities, social media and even everyday relationship stressors. They need a place and a plan that will help them to shut out the outside factors.”
Dr. Ruff said families can create good study environments at any time, but the beginning of a school year always provides the best opportunity to do it. Parents should work with their kids to first address three important questions:
Discuss the best place to study and do homework. It should be a low-traffic space that is free of distractions, but where a child can be easily monitored.
“It may not be the child’s room,” Dr. Ruff said. “Their room is away
The where:
meaning they’ve smoked a pack a day for 30 years, two packs a day for 15 years, three packs a day for 10 years, etc.
That coverage recommendation was based on a large, multiyear study that found a 20 percent reduction in lung cancer deaths among people roughly that age and smoking history who got the scans.
The American Lung Association estimates that about 9 million people nationwide fit the criteria.
But hardly anyone is getting the scan, even within the highrisk group.
Andrea McKee, a radiation oncologist in Massachusetts and scientific adviser to the lung association, said that a patient registry shows about 230,000 of the 9 million have been scanned: about 2.5 percent.
Why? McKee said in many cases, their doctors just might not know it’s an option.
“Doctors should know about medical advances, but we don’t take a test every year making sure we know what the latest advance in medicine is,” McKee said.
But Nirmal Veeramachaneni, a thoracic surgeon at the University of Kansas Hospital, said there’s from mom and dad and can be filled with things that serve as distractions such as technology or toys. When I grew up, our space was at the dining room table. It was a room with low-traffic but in plain sight of mom.”
Determine the best time for the child to do their homework and establish it as a rule. Parents should carefully consider their child’s individual personality and needs before determining a time, and be flexible and willing to change that if time proves it wasn’t the best choice in the first place.
“Every child has different needs,” she said. “For some kids, there is comfort in knowing that they can come home and immediately do homework and get it done. Others
The when:
more at play. Veeramachaneni, who wrote an article about the low-dose CT scan in a journal for Kansas City doctors, said there’s a shortage of qualified lung cancer screening programs outside of major metro areas.
There’s a good reason for that, he said: It’s hard for small, rural medical centers to replicate the results of the national study.
“The problem with the trial is, it was done at academic centers where you had expert radiologists who did nothing but look at chest CTs, and you had expert pulmonologists who could do some of the procedures required, plus you also had surgical expertise with minimally invasive surgeons,” Veeramachaneni said. “But you don’t get that nationwide. So if you’re in one of the smaller towns in Kansas, you might actually do more harm than good trying to screen.”
False positives lead to risky and unnecessary open-chest surgeries for smokers whose breathing is already compromised. Even at the centers that participated in the national trial, 16 deaths were due to such procedures and only 10 of those 16 patients were later found to actually have had lung cancer. The other six were operated on based on false positives. need time to make the transition from the school day to homework. They may need an hour to unwind, stretch their muscles outside or get the energy from an afterschool snack.”
Dr. Ruff can’t stress enough the importance of giving children a long-term view of homework. Parents should discuss with their kids why schoolwork is important. Look for opportunities to talk about their gifts and skills and how they may use them one day in the workforce and then tie that back to the importance of good grades today.
“Talk to your child about future aspirations and combine those goals into what their healthy study habits are going to look like,” she said. “If your child talks about going to a
The why:
Veeramachaneni said the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, recommended covering the screening against the advice of its own advisory committee on new science and technology, which said covering the scans would lead to unequal care depending on where patients live.
“I call this the great health care divide: most places you go, you’re getting the big incision,” Veeramachaneni said.
Givens was referred to KU Hospital, where the low-dose CT scan turned up two suspicious nodules, one in each lung. Veeramachaneni excised bits of both using a minimally invasive surgery. One was a false positive, but the other was cancerous, so Veeramachaneni went in for a second procedure to excise it.
It was Stage 1 cancer, so Givens didn’t need chemotherapy and her prognosis is good. If it had progressed to later stages in which physical symptoms appear, her chances of survival would have dropped dramatically.
“I feel like the scan is very, very important,” Givens said. “It’s the difference between life and death, and I think all persons should be able to have access to have this done.” particular college, help set that into motion by showing them the necessary building blocks to get there.”
A healthy study environment and habits can have a direct correlation to a child’s health. Dr. Ruff encourages parents to work with their child on proper posture while working at a table or while on a computer. Proper posture helps a child fight fatigue and reduces their risk for neck, back and joint pain. Nutrition and sleep also play an integral role in successful study habits.
“Having the right amount of food energy can absolutely affect the ability to focus,” Dr. Ruff said. “You have to put fuel into the machine in order for it to work, but it has to be the right kind of fuel. Don’t let kids fill up on sugary foods that can end up sapping their energy. Instead, offer after-school snacks such as apples and peanut butter or carrots and dip. And last but not least make sure your child is getting the eight to 10 hours of sleep they need each night.”
For more information on study environments or to find a Premier Physician Network physician near you, go online to www.PremierPhysicianNet.com.