It’s been a week of finding out things I didn’t know I didn’t know about. iCarly, for one. Life expectancy in young people with deliberate self harm for another. And fake medicines. [polldaddy poll=8567907] […]
Category: archimedes
What would you like (for Christmas / Birthday / Leaving present …)?
Now, when you’ve got someone who’s older than – say – five, and you’re not Santa … actually, even if you are … and they have a gift-related event coming up, you tend to ask them what they might like for a present (if you’re in the UK). (If you’ve not had this experience, you […]
Children are not little adults. Sometimes.
We reported some time ago that a review of Cochrane reviews (yes .. we are well aware of the meta-meta here ) looking at both adult and child responses to treatments showed, on average, that an intervention was equally as likely to be effective, or ineffective, in children as it was in adults. Like many averages, […]
Has anyone ever seen an academic title like this where the answer is “Yes”?
You know the sort – ” Is survival and neurodevelopmental impairment at 2 years of age the gold standard outcome for neonatal trials?” – have you ever seen one written where the answer is “Yes”? Go on … have a look and quote us some in the comments. – Archi […]
Measuring consentability
So I’m inventing words here. Could be worse though, could be “stooling” for “having a poo” or “pedagogy” for .. well, whatever you want it to mean when you really mean “be quiet and listen”. But how can you judge if a child / young person is sufficiently aware of ‘stuff’ to be able to […]
What moved you to move?
When was the last time you changed your behaviour? (I’m not talking here of speaking differently to your Mum in Urdu, your sister in Londoneese and your patient in Glaswegian …) When did you last decide “I am doing THIS/THAT thing differently from now on.” Got one? Right. Why did you do it? Take 30 […]
Ignore the platelet count in HSP if you’re wondering about kidneys
Every now & then you bump into something that makes your heart sing. For me, I sometimes struggle to come up with good examples of an ‘EBM’ tennet – for instance, the difference between statistical and clinical significance – which has an actual origin. Well, in a paper entitled Platelet Counts in Children With Henoch–Schonlein Purpura—Relationship […]
Deliberation and determination
What does it mean to have a choice in your care? It’s an interesting question, I think. And may not be as neatly answered as the pat response to an exam: “for example, let the child choose which book to look at while you do the venipuncture!. If you can’t influence the final yes / no […]
The crumbling of the pyramid of evidence
The ‘old way’ of thinking about the hierarchy of evidence was classically envisaged as a systematic review at the top, falling through RCT, cohorts and case-control to expert opinion (and below that, in some iterations, case law & legislative decisions). There’s been a move against this, with the GRADE system as explained recently in our popular […]
Always question your question
I was recently at a wonderful conference in Toronto, where 1900 folk interested in childhood cancer came together to learn, argue, network, present and be merry – #SIOP2014. There was a particularly interesting debate between two very clever oncologists about whether or not we should use antifungal prophylaxis in children with AML and post-stem-cell-transplant. (Both are […]