Twins Die after Tonsillectomy and Adenoidectomy

Twin Ohio boys, 3 years old, both died on April 19, 2006 after both kids underwent tonsillectomy & adenoidectomy  (T&A) less than 48 hour earlier. Both children were discharged home on the same day of surgery. Read the story here . On Aug 6, 2010, a malpractice suit was found against the otolaryngologist who performed the surgery, based on the assertion that if the surgeon "kept the children in the hospital overnight - something within his power and a standard practice for chil…

1/08/2011 1

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Teenager Dies From Tonsillitis

A teenager in the United Kingdom died from an unfortunate missed diagnosis of tonsillitis . Apparently, her primary care doctor thought she had swine flu and was prescribed tamiflu... an anti-viral medication. For bacterial tonsillitis , treatment is with anti-bacterial antibiotics like amoxicillin, penicillin, etc. The tonsil infection spread into her blood, seeded her lungs, and eventually caused multi-organ failure and death. Read the full story here .

11/03/2010 0

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Hearing Loss on the Rise in US Teenagers

JAMA published research showing a rise in hearing loss among US teenagers from 15% between 1988-1994 (2928 teens) to 20% from 2005-2006 (1771 teens). The study was a cross-sectional analyses of US representative demographic and audiometric data. No one quite knows exactly why this has happened... but my guess is the increasing prevalence of portable music players where loud music can cause hearing damage. Read a story on this in Reuters here . Reference: Change in Prevalence of Hearing…

8/17/2010 0

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Smoking is Highly Addictive in Kids (Teens and Babies) [video]

All it takes is one cigarette a month. A recent study in Pediatrics that tracked the course of addiction to smoking among a group of sixth-graders found that smoking only one cigarette a month was all it took to become dependent. In the study titled " Early Course of Nicotine Dependence in Adolescent Smokers ," the researchers found that one cigarette a month or one cigarette a week was enough to keep addiction satisfied, but as time goes by, the child has to smoke cigarettes m…

5/31/2010 0

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