Sickle Cell Disease: Children
This inherited disease is most common in people of African or West Indian descent, but may also occur in people from the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, and the eastern Mediterranean. A child with sickle cell disease (SCD) will be prone [...]
Epileptic Seizures: Children
The most common disease of the brain seen in children, epilepsy affects 1 in 100 births in the U.S. The normal electrical impulses in the brain are disturbed, causing periodic seizures that can be very minor or severe.
There are several forms [...]
Baby Temperature
There’s no doubt that overheating from too many night colors, too many blankets, and too high a room temperature is a contributory factor, as SIDS is much more common in overheated babies. (The risk of overheating alone, however, is less than [...]
Crib Death
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), which is known colloquially as crib death, is the sudden and unexpected death of a baby for no obvious reason. It is estimated that about 5,000 babies die each year in the U.S. from SIDS. This has decreased [...]
Imperforate Anus
In rare cases, a baby’s anus is sealed at birth, either because there is a thin membrane of skin over the opening or because the anal canal, which links the rectum with the anus, has not developed. The rectal pouch may be connected to the [...]
Pyloric Stenosis
In this condition, the pylorus, the passage that leads from the stomach into the small intestine, is narrow because of a thickening of the muscle. The cause is unknown, and it is more common in boys than in girls.
Babies With Down Syndrome
This is by far the most common of a range of conditions called trisomies, in which one pair of chromosomes has an extra chromosome, making three. In Down syndrome, there are three number 21 chromosomes. Affected infants characteristically have [...]