Children’s of Alabama PedsCast: Recent Episodes
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The Children’s of Alabama PedsCast is a pediatric sub-specialist peer-to-peer podcast focused on research, innovative programs and advances in pediatric health care at Children’s of Alabama. Featured speakers include physicians, surgeons, clinical specialists and other experts in the field of pediatrics.
Childhood and adolescence can be challenging times, especially when children have problems with mood, paying attention or if they face difficulties at home or school. If problems are not treated, children can develop low self-esteem, perform poorly in school, have trouble with relationships or struggle to reach their potential. Children’s of Alabama offers comprehensive behavioral health care that address the specific needs of each patient. In this episode, Brandy Reeve, the senior executive leader of Behavioral Health Services at Children's, explains the breadth of services the hospital offers and how they're helping children cope with difficult times, especially as the mental health crisis progresses.
In this episode, Dr. Matthew Kutny explains the work he's doing in the Pediatric Clinical Trials Office at Children's of Alabama and the difference it's making in the lives of children in Alabama and beyond.
As an endocrinologist who cares for both children and adults at Children's of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Sajal Patel, M.D., understands the needs of both populations. She uses that expertise to help children transition from pediatric care to adult care through the Children's of Alabama Staging Transition for Every Patient (STEP) Clinic at Children's. In this episode, she talks about the care she provides for patients going through this process.
Lung injury is a common complication in children following cardiac surgery. Mechanical ventilation is often required to support patients for hours to days in the intensive care unit. The severity of lung injury can vary by patient. Being able to predict which patient are at a higher risk of requiring respiratory support due to worse lung injury is crucial. Our heart center is the first in the nation to report the discovery of a novel blood biomarker for lung injury following heart surgery. Using our heart center biorepository we identified and validated the finding of the new biomarker “Proteoglycan 4” and its correlation with lung injury. In order to validate this finding, a large number of patients need to be tested. Funding from the Hope Fund is supporting the costs of these tests. It is anticipated that if the initial results are correct, cardiac intensivists will be able to predict who is at higher risk for lung injury and adjust their management to minimize the injury which can last lifetime.
Dr. Jonathan Byrnes is an Associate Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Medical Director of Cardiac ECMO, at Children's of Alabama. During this episode of PedsCast, Dr. Byrnes will discuss the unique aspects of a multicenter anticoagulation study and the use of bivalirudin in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
Traci Jester, M.D. is the director of Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Children’s of Alabama and is an Associate Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Jester serves as the Co-Director of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic Chair of Pediatric Affairs Committee for Crohn's and Colitis Foundation. Recently, the Foundation received a grant from the CDC to support a comprehensive 5-year project partnering with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to identify and address barriers to diagnosis and care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, especially the experience of African American patients. The study will be conducted at the Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease clinic at Children's of Alabama as well as the UAB Gastroenterology Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic. In this PedsCast, Dr. Jester will talk about the 3 components of the study which include research, focus groups and dissemination of resources to the community to raise awareness about IBD and highlight the importance of timely referrals to gastroenterologists.
Carmen Tong, D.O., is the director of robotic surgery at Children's of Alabama and Associate Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). On this episode of PedsCast, Dr. Tong discusses a quality improvement (QI) project on adherence to follow-up after kidney stone surgery in children. This QI project investigates the association between demographic factors and stone presentation characteristics to see if certain populations are more likely to come back for their postoperative visit. Long term follow up is important for pediatric kidney stones, because first time stone formers are 50% more likely to form stones in the first 3 years.
Dr. Kevin Williams is an orthopedic surgeon at Children’s of Alabama and Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Williams’ clinical interests are in general pediatric orthopedic surgery with emphasis in pediatric sports medicine. During this PedsCast episode, Dr. Williams will discuss a current study focusing on elbow fractures.
Dr. Michael Siefert is the Medical Director of Pediatric Renal Transplantation at Children's of Alabama and UAB. Today Dr. Seifert will be discussing pediatric kidney transplantation and the risks involved, as well as how Children's of Alabama is a national leader in kidney transplantation.
Dr. Marcos Pozo, Director of Transplant Services at Children's of Alabama, discusses updates on biliary atresia and the consideration of primary liver transplantation as a treatment.
Wendy Landier, PhD, CRNP, FAAN, serves as Associate Professor, School of Nursing Associate Director, Institute for Cancer Outcomes and Survivorship for UAB. Dr. Landier's practice at Children's of Alabama is in the Hematology/Oncology Division.
Dr. Landier has provided two studies about the HPV vaccine in cancer survivors. The first study showed that HPV vaccination rates in cancer survivors are significantly lower than those in the healthy age-matched population. The primary reason for that is lack of healthcare provider recommendation for the vaccine.
Dr. Landier also tested the HPV vaccine in survivors and found that the 3-dose HPV vaccine series is safe and has a similar immunogenicity profile to that seen in the age-matched general population.
The second study, currently in progress, is testing the effectiveness and evaluating the implementation of a healthcare provider-directed intervention known as “HPV PROTECT” in increasing HPV vaccination rates in cancer survivors.
Vein of Galen malformations (VOGMs) are the most common and severe neonatal blood vessel anomaly of the human cerebral vasculature. VOGM are the result of abnormal connections between arteries, veins, and capillary vessels during neonatal development. Even with neurosurgical intervention, VOGM can cause systemic problems such as cardiac failure due to the heart’s inability to accommodate the largest amount of blood flow into the venous system. The VOGM may also cause increased intracranial pressure, leading to brain hemorrhage or impaired draining of cerebrospinal fluid resulting in hydrocephalus (i.e., accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain). These problems may be life-threatening. Despite this, the cause of VOGM is largely unknown, but is widely hypothesized to be caused by genetic abnormalities. To understand the genetic and molecular basis of VOGM, we created the VOGM Genetics Research Consortium (VOGM-GRC), an international multi-institutional network of the world’s leading pediatric neurosurgeons, endovascular specialists, vascular neurologists, and geneticists/molecular biologists. We will aggregate genetic data from both germline (i.e., cheek swab DNA) as well as endoluminal biopsy of the VOGM lesion directly. Our study will identify causative genetic and molecular factors governing VOGM development and maintenance, with the goal of repurposing or developing novel pharmacologic therapies to improve VOGM treatment. Finally, our study serves as an archetype for applying endoluminal biopsy techniques to pediatric cerebrovascular disease more broadly. Understanding the genetic basis of VOGM may broadly inform our understanding of cerebrovascular development and disease pathogenesis; improve clinical prognostication and decision-making; and provide a mechanistic foundation for the rationale use of repurposed drugs and/or design of targeted therapeutics relevant for VOGM and potentially other cerebrovascular lesions.
The Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network (RDCRN) program is designed to advance medical research on rare diseases by providing support for clinical studies and facilitating collaboration, study enrollment and data sharing. Through the RDCRN consortia, physician scientists and their multidisciplinary teams work together with patient advocacy groups to study nearly 200 rare diseases at sites across the nation.
Dr. Wally Carlo has agreed to be interviewed in an upcoming PedsCast podcast. He is the Division Director of Pediatric Neonatology at Children’s/UAB, holds the Edwin M. Dixon Professor of Pediatrics endowed chair and is a world-renowned neonatologist. He would like to highlight clinical trials that we are currently participating in, as well as the Maternal Fetal Network, one of three perinatal networks on the NIH that we belong to. UAB/COA is the only institution that belongs to all three – the MFM, NRN and the Global Network.
Children’s of Alabama understands that the hospital can be stressful for children and adolescents who respond differently to the sensory inputs of their environment. Dr Michele Kong discusses the sensory pathway at Children’s of Alabama that offers children resources to decrease sensory overload experienced during their hospital visit.
First Contact for Primary Care is a pediatric migraine action plan established to support community physicians and nurse practitioners in caring for their patients with primary headache disorders.
Michael A. Lopez, M.D., Ph.D., has received a nearly $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to expand the current understanding of the role of a TGF-beta transcription factor in the dysregulation of microRNA in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The goal is to identify aberrant pathways that can be modulated to mitigate DMD pathophysiology.
Jeffrey Blount, M.D., M.P.H, is the director and co-founder of the Global Alliance for the Prevention of Spina Bifida (GAPSBiF). This
organization seeks to use science-based advocacy to promote global fortification of food and salt with folic acid for the prevention
of spina bifida. One of the enabling objectives to accomplish this larger objective was to update and review best available world
literature on folic acid fortification. This resulted in a landmark presentation in Lancet Global Health that addressed and summarized
this topic. Ongoing work is underway to use these reviews to support a WHO/WHA General Assembly Resolution supporting global
folic acid fortification.
In this episode, Dr. David Azkenazi talks about neonatal dialysis practices at Children's of Alabama and how the hospital serves patients through the Pediatric and Infant Center for Acute Nephrology (PICAN) and educates clinicians with its Neonatal and Infant Course for Kidney Support (NICKS) courses.
Dr. Daniel Feig leads the Food Is Medicine Program at Children's of Alabama. In this episode, he explains how changing a child's diet and eating habits can help treat some childhood illnesses.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit created the Golden Week program to improve outcomes for infants born prematurely at 28 weeks’ gestation or earlier. The program has resulted in a 30 percent relative risk reduction in infant mortality or severe intraventricular hemorrhage within the first week of life.
Through the Golden Week program, we have standardized care that infants receive during their first week of life, ultimately improving their survival rates. The program provides guidance for physicians and nurses on clinical and nonclinical aspects of caring for an extremely preterm newborn.