Primary Care Corner with Dr. Geoffrey Modest: Childhood immunizations 2014

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices just released the 2014 schedule for childhood immunizations. There are minimal changes over last year, basically:

–meningococcal conjugate vaccine (MCV4-CRM) can be used down to 2 months of age in high risk (eg anatomic or functional asplenia, complement component deficiency)

-includes what to do if patient given vaccine prior to minimum age/interval between doses (incorporated in the catch-up vaccine chart, which is much clearer than previously)

-updated flu vaccine recs for this year, also pneumococcal vaccine for high risk

-footnote updated for hep A vaccine (also remember to consider in adults who travel to endemic areas, which seems to be most of the world. though if they lived there as a child, consider checking titer first – since our experience is about 90% are already immune)

for mmwr overview of immun sched: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm63e0203a1.htm

for the immunization schedule in printable form: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/child-adolescent.html

geoff

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