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Pushing Pediatrics Forward

From the benefits of natural remedies to the most advanced, high-resolution orthopedic imaging, pediatric doctors throughout the area are finding incredible ways to enhance their patients’ treatments and quality of life. Orlando Family Magazine spoke with local physicians in different disciplines to discuss the latest in pediatric healthcare.

The Future of Spine Surgery

Dr. Raymund Woo, the medical director of pediatric orthopedics at AdventHealth for Children, and his colleagues have utilized 7D navigation for scoliosis care since March of 2022. The advanced technology, which Woo compared to that of iPhone facial recognition, allows the team to perform constructive spine surgery on pediatric scoliosis patients safer than ever before.

Comprised of two high-resolution cameras, which are built into the surgical light suspended above the patient, the 7D technology gives the surgical team binocular vision and removes line-of-sight frustrations. The images are displayed on a high-definition adjustable screen that allows the surgeon to clearly and accurately navigate the area in less time than with traditional scoliosis surgery.

Along with visual and efficiency advantages, 7D technology is also much safer for pediatric patients.

“The system doesn’t require any X-ray, it requires no radiation. One of the biggest problems for spine surgery is the large amount of radiation that the child is exposed to. It’s tremendous,” Woo explains.

Utilizing 7D also results in quicker surgeries with less blood loss, ultimately providing patients with a shorter recovery time and less postoperative pain.

Today, AdventHealth for Children maintains its mantra of being the only health system in the Southeastern United States to utilize this technology, and Woo is the only surgeon at the hospital utilizing 7D. While a new and potentially daunting concept for patients and their parents, he assures them that this new technology has changed scoliosis surgery for the better.

“Any system that makes that surgery easier for me will make it even safer for their child.”

Woo has performed roughly 100 scoliosis surgeries on adolescets with the guided assistance of 7D technology. He even successfully corrected the spine of a 5-year-old girl and has treated patients from Brazil, Puerto Rico and numerous other countries. Because of the success and safety benefits that this technology provides, it has garnered attention and desire around the world.

“Parents feel extremely comfortable knowing that their child is actually getting better care, because of this enabling technology.”

Healthy Colonic Motility

Doctors at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children have spent the last four years studying the impact that coffee has on pediatric colonic motility to enhance treatment in patients suffering from chronic constipation who have been otherwise refractory to usual active therapies.

Vijay Mehta, DO, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Orlando Health, is one of the leading physicians in the study, which he says is based on research done by other physicians which focused on caffeine’s impact on adults’ colonic motility.

“They saw a response from caffeinated coffee, but interestingly, they saw some response with decaffeinated coffee as well. So I wanted to replicate this study in pediatrics to see if the same holds true,” Mehta says. The group at Orlando Health focused on both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, as well as laxatives and caffeine tablets in children ages four to 18.

The doctors found the same conclusion in children as was found in adults: While caffeine is a colonic stimulant, there are likely other components of caffeinated and non-caffeinated drinks that increase colonic motility. Additionally, pediatric patients reacted more strongly to caffeinated coffee than caffeine tablets, and half of the patients in the study had a reaction to decaffeinated coffee, proving the conclusion also found in adults.

Mehta says that while he isn’t utilizing the effects of caffeine and coffee on a “regular basis” with his chronic constipation patients, he often mentions the benefits to their parents. He hopes to conduct more studies on potential postoperative uses by mirroring more research done on adults.

“There are a few adult studies where, after surgeries, sometimes you can have patients that take a while for their bowels to kind of wake up and to then be able to defecate and get back to normal. And they found that the use of some of these caffeinated beverages has decreased that time,” he says.

While giving a child coffee seems to be a recipe for jitters and restlessness, decaffeinated coffee has roughly eight milligrams of caffeine, which is slightly less than that of a full-size chocolate bar, and its benefits far outweigh potential unfavorable impacts.

“There are many families that are concerned with chronic use of laxatives, though, from our standpoint, proper use of it is pretty safe. But some families do feel like having the more natural products and decaf may be more acceptable for them. And so, certainly, I think it’d be a reasonable option,” says Mehta.

Hearing Aid

According to Cedric Pritchett, MD, the ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Florida, about 4% of babies born in the state fail their newborn hearing testing. These patients, as well as other children who suffer hearing loss from things like traumatic incidents, genetic conditions or other circumstances, make up a large percentage of Florida’s youth. Knowing the high demand for advanced pediatric ear care and the importance of hearing for youth development, Pritchett and his team launched Nemours’ new Ear, Hearing and Communications Center.

The center opened at the beginning of this year and integrates the expertise of doctors, audiologists, speech pathologists, genetic experts, psychologists and developmental pediatric professionals to identify and treat hearing loss in pediatric patients.

Nemours sees patients ranging from newborn to 18 years old with varying hearing loss severity. However, Pritchett says, the most common thing he comes across is sensorineural hearing loss, which is caused by problems in the inner ear.

While many patients suffering from sensorineural hearing loss can access sound with the assistance of a hearing aid, others cannot.

“In some children, the severity of the loss is too great for a hearing aid to provide access to sound at a level that will allow normal spoken language to develop,” Pritchett says, noting that the younger the patient is, the more likely they are to experience developmental delays. These patients often undergo surgery to have cochlear implants inserted in either one or both ears, depending on their situation.

The difference between the services offered at Nemours’ Ear, Hearing and Communications Center and typical hearing loss care is the overall convenience and peace of mind it provides for patients and their families.

“It allows gaps that would normally be present to the fill, right? It brings professionals with expertise together to focus on the needs of each child and focus on those in the context of other things that are happening,” Pritchett says. “The center is really innovative, it’s inclusive and it’s exemplary.”