Search for tag: "prevent"

Dr. Gellner: Teen pregnancy. It's something I see more than you'd think. So what's going on? Is it lack of parent involvement in a teen's life? Are kids too embarrassed to talk to parents about protection?

Announcer: Keep your kids healthy and happy. You are now entering the "Healthy Kids Zone" with Dr. Cindy Gellner on The Scope.

Dr. Gellner: According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, more than half a million teen girls become pregnant every year. They even have set out a policy statement on helping to counsel pregnant teens to make sure they get good medical care and information about their options while still being respectful of the families involved.

In my experience, teen pregnancy doesn't have a set demographic. I've taken care of teens who've become pregnant or who father pregnancies from all walks of life, from affluent families, Medicaid families, foster families, families where teens have good relationships with their parents, families where teens have very strained relationships with their families, teens who are "good kids" and teens who have been more difficult to control.

I've seen it in families who are very much against birth control and who promote no sex until marriage, and in families who are very open about sex and birth control. I've had to tell teens aged 16, 14, even a preteen 12-year old that they are pregnant.

Bottom line, there is no age or social situation that can predict teen pregnancy. Of course, the only thing that prevents teen pregnancy with 100% effectiveness is teens not having sex at all. However, we know teens and we know how their hormones are. If a teen wants to have sex, they will most likely go ahead and have sex. The more taboo it is in the family though, we sometimes find the less likely the teen will talk to someone about protection.

Again, sex doesn't just cause babies. It causes sexually transmitted diseases too. There is less and less sex-ed in schools today, and while kids should be taught the basic biology of sex as part of health class, they really need to get the bulk of sex-ed from their parents. They need to know what their family values are about sex. They need to feel comfortable talking to their parents about sex if they have questions so they don't get misinformation from their teens.

Trust me, I've heard some pretty strange things out there from teens. Pretty much all pediatricians are comfortable talking with teenagers about sex even if their parents aren't. In fact, it's something we start talking about at the 12 year well visit in my clinic, mainly to bring awareness to the parent and the patient. To say, "Hey, guess what? Your teen and their body are going to change a lot in the next few years, and we really want to help open the lines of communication so your teen knows that if they have questions they can talk to someone." Talking about sex won't make your teen go out and do it, nor will it prevent them from doing it, but it just might prevent a teen pregnancy.

If your teen is sexually active, most pediatricians are comfortable discussing birth control options. If your teen becomes pregnant, it's very important for the health of the teen and the baby to get medical care right away. Your teen's pediatrician can help you find an OB that works with teens.

Bottom line is teen pregnancy has always happened and will continue to happen, but the health of the teens and the babies needs to be top priority no matter what the situation.

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Dr. Gellner: Teens and STDs, or STIs as they're now called, sexually transmitted infections, are they really something we need to worry about? More than you think.

Announcer: Keep your kids healthy and happy. You are now entering the Healthy Kid Zone with Dr. Cindy Gellner on The Scope.

Dr. Gellner: While adults tried to stress to teens the importance of abstinence, it's no surprise that in the throes of hormones teens do have sex, often unprotected, and that can lead to STIs. STIs are infections that pass from one person to another during sexual contact, whether it be intercourse, oral sex, or anal sex. Some of the more common STIs are chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, HPV, or human papillomavirus, trichomoniasis.

Others include lice, syphilis, HIV, and hepatitis. The good news is that all of these have ways of being prevented. The easiest way to prevent some like hepatitis and HPV is to make sure your child is vaccinated against those diseases. Consistently using barrier protection, such as condoms, also helps prevent STIs.

The good news is that some STIs, like chlamydia, can be cured with antibiotics. The bad news is that viral STIs, like herpes, HPV and HIV, can be treated with medications to help with symptoms, but never cured. Quite often, teenagers and adults may not even realize that they have an STI. Many of these don't have symptoms until the infection has gotten out of control. And so the diseases can spread to many sexual partners.

STIs can have significant consequences, including affecting whether a woman can get pregnant or not, trigger premature birth, or even spread from a pregnant mother to her baby and cause birth defects or even death to the baby. And guys, they can become infertile.

Teens are often self-conscious about talking about anything that has to do with their privates. But symptoms of STI shouldn't be ignored. The most common symptoms are pain with urination and unusual discharge. But any blisters or painless bumps in the private area need to be checked out as well. STIs are often pretty easy to diagnose. Normally, all that is required is an exam and a urine test. For some STIs, like HIV or hepatitis, blood tests are needed. Depending on what the diagnosis is determines what treatment would be given.

So how can you educate your teen about preventing STIs? First and foremost, the most important thing is to have open communication about sex. Knowing what your family's values are and reassurance that your teen is able to talk to you about any concerns goes a long way. If your teen is sexually active, make sure they know about contraception options. And if they have any symptoms, be sure to make an appointment with your child's provider as soon as possible. We talk to teens all the time about these kinds of things, and we can easily help you navigate this tricky part of growing up.

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Dr. Jones: What can you do to prevent hearing this sound in your home? That's the sound of whooping cough, the sound no mother ever wants to hear. Whooping cough is on the rise in the U.S and can be deadly to infants. This is Dr. Kirtly Jones from Obstetrics and Gynecology at University Health Care and this is the scope of the problem of pertussis known as whooping cough, on The Scope.

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Dr. Jones: Whooping cough is the familiar term for pertussis, a bacterial infection that causes a breathing problem in particular, a very particular cough. There has been a 1000% increase in the incidence of pertussis in the U.S since 1990. U.S has experienced a resurgence of pertussis and since 2010, we see about 10,000 to 50,000 cases of pertussis each year and it's reported in every state.

In 2012, we saw the most cases that we had seen in 60 years. There were 48 ,000 reported cases of pertussis and over 2000 of those were in infants younger than three months of age and 15 of those infants died. Most pertussis deaths are in infants who are too young to be protected by their own vaccine.

Pertussis can cause serious and sometimes life threatening complications in infants, especially in the first six months of life. In infants younger than a year who get pertussis about half are hospitalized. The younger the infant, the more likely treatment in the hospital will be needed. Of those infants who are hospitalized, about 67% will have breathing problems, stop breathing, 23% will get pneumonia and over 1% will die.

How do we protect our infants? We all had vaccinations when we were little and boosters later. At least we should have. However, the vaccination doesn't protect forever. The recommendation is to immunize all pregnant women between 27 and 36 weeks so the newborn can have maternal antibodies in their blood and that come through their placenta. This will help protect the infant until they are able to make their own antibodies from their own vaccine at about two months of age. Moms can also transmit the antibodies that they got from their vaccine during pregnancy through their breast milk.

Waiting until the baby is born to get the vaccine may be too late for the mom to get it in their breast milk and won't directly protect the baby as much. Moms should protect themselves with vaccinations. About 30% to 40% of infants who got whooping cough got it from their moms. But giving the antibodies to babies through the placenta and breast milk helps protect the baby from other members of the family. So moms could get vaccinations with every pregnancy. Easy, right?

Since 2011 when the Tdap vaccine recommendations were issued, vaccinations rates with Tdap among pregnant women have been low, when survey of pregnant women from 2011 to 2012 estimate that only 2.6% of women had received Tdap during their most recent pregnancy. Babies should also be cocooned. Every member of the family that's going to have contact with the baby should have a Tdap in the last five years. I have to get one just because I work in the hospital. The Tdap vaccine does not have any active bacteria, it doesn't have thimerosal, a mercury preservative that's concerned some groups, and severe side effects are very rare.

So what to do? Get your vaccine when you're pregnant. You can get the Tdap and the flu vaccine at the same time. Get the family members to update their vaccines to cocoon the baby in a pertussis-protected home. Breast feed your baby and get babies their own vaccines when they are scheduled for them. Let's not have to hear that cough. Thanks for joining us on The Scope.

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