Improving pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) follow-up.

Standardization of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) care through participation in the ImproveCareNow (ICN) Network has improved outcomes for pediatric patients with IBD, but under the current care model, our improvements have plateaued. Current ICN model care guidelines recommend health supervision visits every six months. We identified a gap in our practice's ability to ensure either a routine six month follow-up or a rapid follow-up after a disease flare, and a significant number of patients with active disease status during a six month period lacked timely reassessment after interventions or medication changes.

Disease control and health-related quality of life in juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

Objective: To examine variability in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) experiencing no or minimal clinical symptoms, and in a subgroup with polyarticular JIA treated with biologic agents for 12 months.

Methods: We defined 3 samples using a database of patients ages 2-18 years with JIA (n = 524; patient visits [PV] = 2,354): visits (PV = 2,155) with no or minimal clinical symptoms on at least 1 of 4 measures (active joint count, pain, physician global disease rating, Childhood Health Assessment Questionnaire); visits (PV = 941) with no or minimal symptoms on all 4 measures; and children (n = 31) with polyarticular JIA treated with biologic agents for 12 months. HRQOL was measured using the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) and the percentage of patients with suboptimal HRQOL was determined.

Child behavior and parent management strategies at mealtimes in families with a school-age child with cystic fibrosis.

Parent and child mealtime behaviors in school-age children with cystic fibrosis (CF; n = 28) and children without CF (n = 28) were examined during dinner meals by using multivariate analysis of variance. Parents of children with CF were found to differ from comparison parents in the frequency and rate of child management strategies. No differences were found in child behaviors.