Mumps

By ​David Wright, M.S., PA-C, NRP; and Kate Randolph, B.S. You and your partner are responding to a 911 call. Dispatch informs you that an alarmed new mother has a 6-week-old premature infant who had a 2-minute episode of lethargy. When you arrive on scene, that mother is now calm and states her baby looks much better at this time. You evaluate the patient and obtain further history. The patient's mother informs you that the patient was born prematurely at 31 weeks and 4 days, and admitted in the NICU for 5 weeks. The patient was just discharged 4 days ago. Today, while holding the patient, she noted that he suddenly stopped breathing and became limp. Even though she was not feeding the child at the time of the episode, she performed some back blows, but nothing changed. She called 911 and noticed that the baby had a bluish color ar...

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 23, the 54th day of 2022. There are 311 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Feb. 23, 1954, the first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students were vaccinated. On this date: In 1685, composer George Frideric Handel was born in present-day Germany. In 1822, Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city. In 1836, the siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas. In 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office, following word of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States. In 1942, the first shelling of the U.S. mainland during World War II occurred as a Japanese submarine fired on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California, causing little d...

NEW YORK (WABC) -- There will not be a vaccine mandate for cheerleaders at New York's state high school championships. The New York State Public High School Athletic Association now says it will instead hold the competition without spectators. An earlier plan for a vaccine mandate was met with opposition, particularly in Nassau County. The championships are being held in Rochester next month. RELATED: What are the symptoms of the COVID omicron variant? Here are more of today's COVID-19 headlines: Queen Elizabeth tests positive for COVID Buckingham Palace confirmed that Queen Elizabeth II tested positive for COVID on Sunday. They say the Queen is experiencing mild cold like symptoms but expects to continue light duties at Windsor over the coming week. She will continue to receive medical attention and will follow all the appropriate guidelines. Anime convention at Javits not a superspreader event When a person tested positive for omicron after attending an anime convention in Ne...

30th September 2021 FOI 21/1030 Dear Thank you for your Freedom of Information (FOI) request dated 7th September 2021. Under the Freedom of Information (FOI) act, you have requested to be provided with the following: Information on Yellow Card reports if any from the last year (2019-2020) from both brands of the MMR. How many vaccines versus reports of reactions and what type/symptoms of reaction. When considering the Vaccine Analysis Print, it is important to be aware of the following points: A reported reaction does not necessarily mean it has been caused by the vaccine, only that the reporter had a suspicion it may have. Each year, millions of doses of routine vaccines are given in the UK alone, and when any vaccine is administered to very large numbers of people, some recipients will inevitably experience illness following vaccination. The fact that symptoms occur after use of a vaccine, and are reported via the Yellow Card Scheme, does n...

– OPINION – By Gary Ades Top regulators and agency leaders from FDA, USDA, AFDO, and CDC will once again provide food safety professionals, students and regulators with key updates, data, and statistics from their organizations during the Food Safety Summit Town Hall scheduled for May 12 in Rosemont, IL.   Frank Yiannas, Deputy Commissioner, Food Policy and Response for the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ); Sandra Eskin, Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety for the U.S. Department of Agriculture ( USDA ); Rob Tauxe, M.D., M.P.H, Director of NCEZID's Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases (DFWED) in the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) ; and Steve Mandernach, J.D., Executive Director for the Association of Food and Drug Officials ( AFDO ) will participate in an interactive Q&A session with the audience and each other.   Attende...

I can honestly say that not a week goes by on the infectious diseases service without at least one consult request for cellulitis (and often, there are multiple cases). This has always surprised me — cellulitis is a disease that all hospital-based physicians have studied, diagnosed, managed, and cured. Why would an infectious diseases expert need to weigh in, too? I'm not the only physician that has noticed this trend, either. One recent study, conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, examined data for 259 patients admitted with an initial diagnosis of cellulitis. Nearly a third of these patients were considered to have been misdiagnosed, and a good portion would not have required either antibiotic use or hospital admission if they had been diagnosed correctly. I'd estimate that about half of my consults for cellulitis result in a diagnosis of pseudocellulitis (similar exam findings of skin redness, swelling, and pain, but...

Hospital, health system and community leaders know that Medicare is the single largest payer and the single largest cash flow in American healthcare. What many leaders may not know is that as a growing number of people are enrolling in Medicare Advantage plans—channeling a significant portion of that money away from purely fee-based purchases of care and into capitation to buy care by the package, not by the piece—the people most likely to enroll in that program are our low-income Medicare beneficiaries. And too many leaders do not realize that this changing landscape is functionally helping the healthcare system and our communities respond to some of the social factors that have long led to inequities in care. The payment and approach under Medicare Advantage, especially through Special Needs Plans that enroll people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, means that large numbers of low-income people are now getting better coverage, better data support and better care opti...

On Sunday morning, UGA Miracle, the University of Georgia's largest student-run philanthropy, announced it had raised $1,167,175.22 for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. Nearly 2,500 students representing more than 50 student organizations gathered in Tate Student Center Grand Hall and via live stream overnight Saturday to Sunday for UGA Miracle's annual Dance Marathon. Beginning at noon on Saturday and lasting until Sunday afternoon, thousands of students, faculty, staff and members of "Miracle Families" danced, enjoyed live music and continued fundraising for the final few hours of a yearlong effort. This was the 27th annual Dance Marathon and the first fully in-person event after a two-year hiatus due to safety precautions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event is a symbolic gesture of sacrificing a day in support of children who have had to sacrifice much more of their own time to combat illness in hospitals. Since its inception, Miracle has rais...

A recent article in The Conversation raised unnecessary alarm about children's flat feet. The article isn't supported by the best evidence and may have worried parents. The most recent evidence confirms it's normal for young, healthy and active children to have flexible flat feet, and these flat feet will get less flat over time. Flat feet require assessment if they hurt, look different left and right, or if they occur in older children, with few requiring treatment. Children's flat feet reduce as they grow Approximately 15-20% of healthy children have flexible flat feet. Studies have consistently shown a higher prevalence of flat feet in younger children, fewer flat feet in older children, and a return towards flatter feet in older adults. A 2019 study looked at over 3,000 children's feet. It found the normal foot posture across childhood is flat (also known as "pronated") and children's flat feet tend to get less flat as t...