Hearing Assessment in Infants, Children, and Adolescents: Recommendations Beyond Neonatal Screening.

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) are at high risk for permanent deficits in language acquisition and downstream effects such as poor academic performance, personal-social maladjustments, and emotional difficulties. Identification of children born D/HH through newborn hearing screening and subsequent timely early intervention can prevent or reduce many of these adverse consequences. Ongoing surveillance for changes in hearing thresholds after infancy is also important and should be accomplished by subjective assessment for signs of atypical hearing and with objective screening tests.

Therapeutic and Economic Benefits of Service Dogs Versus Emotional Support Dogs for Veterans With PTSD.

Objective: This work aimed to assess the therapeutic and economic benefits of service dogs versus emotional support dogs for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Methods: Veterans with PTSD (N=227) participating in a multicenter trial were randomly assigned to receive a service or emotional support dog; 181 veterans received a dog and were followed up for 18 months. Primary outcomes included overall functioning (assessed with World Health Organization Disability Assessment Scale II [WHODAS 2.

Pediatric Primary Health Care: The Central Role of Pediatricians in Maintaining Children's Health in Evolving Health Care Models.

Pediatric primary health care (PPHC) is of principal importance to the health and development of all children, helping them reach their true potential. Pediatricians, as the clinicians most intensively trained and experienced in child health, are the natural leaders of PPHC within the context of the medical home. Given the rapidly evolving models of pediatric health care delivery, including the explosion of telehealth in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, pediatricians, together with their representative national organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), are the most capable clinicians to guide policy innovations on both the local and national stage.

General Pediatricians and Value-Based Payments.

Background And Objective: In an effort to transform the health care system, payers and physicians are experimenting with new payment models, mostly in an effort to move from a volume-based system to one based on value. We conducted a national survey to evaluate pediatricians' experience with and views about new value-based models of payment.

Methods: An American Academy of Pediatrics 2016 member survey was used to assess provider and practice characteristics, provider experience with value-based payments (VBPs) (through accountable care organizations [ACOs] or pay for quality performance), and provider views about new payment models.

The Care of Children With Congenital Heart Disease in Their Primary Medical Home.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common birth anomaly. With advances in repair and palliation of these complex lesions, more and more patients are surviving and are discharged from the hospital to return to their families. Patients with CHD have complex health care needs that often must be provided for or coordinated for by the primary care provider (PCP) and medical home.

Design and challenges for a randomized, multi-site clinical trial comparing the use of service dogs and emotional support dogs in Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a leading cause of impairments in quality of life and functioning among Veterans. Service dogs have been promoted as an effective adjunctive intervention for PTSD, however published research is limited and design and implementation flaws in published studies limit validated conclusions. This paper describes the rationale for the study design, a detailed methodological description, and implementation challenges of a multisite randomized clinical trial examining the impact of service dogs on the on the functioning and quality of life of Veterans with PTSD.

Guiding Principles for Team-Based Pediatric Care.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recognizes that children's unique and ever-changing needs depend on a variety of support systems. Key components of effective support systems address the needs of the child and family in the context of their home and community and are dynamic so that they reflect, monitor, and respond to changes as the needs of the child and family change. The AAP believes that team-based care involving medical providers and community partners (eg, teachers and state agencies) is a crucial and necessary component of providing high-quality care to children and their families.

Nonemergency Acute Care: When It's Not the Medical Home.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) affirms that the optimal location for children to receive care for acute, nonemergency health concerns is the medical home. The medical home is characterized by the AAP as a care model that "must be accessible, family centered, continuous, comprehensive, coordinated, compassionate, and culturally effective." However, some children and families use acute care services outside the medical home because there is a perceived or real benefit related to accessibility, convenience, or cost of care.

A Community Arts-Based Parent Program.

Early childhood is an important period for development. Parents play an important role in structuring children's physical and psychosocial environments. Much remains unknown about the best methods for engaging parents in health promotion programs.

Empowering parents for evidence-based fever management: An integrative review.

Purpose: Many parents of young, febrile children lack evidence-based tools to manage fever (knowledge, skills, confidence, support), fear negative outcomes, and prioritize the reduction of fever over management of its source. This review examines the literature for evidence of factors that must be considered when designing effective fever management educational interventions for parents, especially those whose health literacy is low.

Data Sources: A systematic search identified studies from 1980 to 2011 using the databases PubMed, CINAHL, Embase, Cochrane Review, Web of Science, PsychInfo, Medline Plus, Joanna Briggs Institute, and Google Scholar.

Bat ectoparasites from the Trans-Pecos region of Texas, including notes from Big Bend National Park.

Ectoparasites of 13 species of molossid, mormoopid, and vespertilionid bats from the Trans-Pecos region of Texas were studied, as follows: Antrozous pallidus (LeConte), Corynorhinus townsendii (Cooper), Eptesicus fuscus (Palisot de Beauvois), Lasiurus cinereus (Palisot de Beauvois), Mormoops megalophylla (Peters), Myotis thysanodes G. S. Miller, Myotis velifer (J.

Isolation and characterization of gamma delta T lymphocyte cell lines from Sinclair swine peripheral blood.

Sinclair miniature swine represent a breed of miniature swine which display a significant incidence of inheritable melanoma which undergo a developmentally regulated spontaneous regression. In an attempt to characterize the host cellular immune response to the melanoma, lymphocyte cell lines have been generated from peripheral blood and designated as peripheral blood lymphocyte cell lines (PBLCLs). The cell lines were expanded in vitro without the addition of exogenous mediators, cloned by limiting dilution, and characterized by flow microfluorimetry, Western, and Northern blot analysis.

Aeromonas, acclimation, and penicillin as complications when leeches are applied to skin flaps in rabbits.

The medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis, has been recognized by plastic surgeons for its ability to reduce congestion and improve blood flow in grafted skin flaps by withdrawing excess blood. The leech's ability to digest blood is due to the presence of Aeromonas hydrophila in the gut of the leech. In this report we describe the occurrence of Aeromonas hydrophila septicaemia in rabbits used in a study to evaluate the efficacy of the medicinal leech on abdominal skin flap survival.

Host environment as a modulating factor of swine natural killer cell activity.

The large granular lymphocyte (LGL) population includes such heterologous effector cells as the natural killer (NK), lymphokine activated killer (LAK), antibody dependent cellular cytotoxic (ADCC) and non-MHC restricted T cells. These LGL subpopulations have all been associated with NK activity. In some species, enhanced NK activity is correlated with exposure to viral, bacterial and parasitic agents.

Association of uveal melanocyte destruction in melanoma-bearing swine with large granular lymphocyte cells.

Sinclair strain miniature swine spontaneously develop and regress malignant melanoma lesions, with uveitis and vitiligo occurring subsequent to tumor regression. Peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) of Sinclair swine undergoing tumor regression and melanocyte destruction demonstrated significant lytic activity against K562, porcine semiallogeneic uveal melanocytes, and melanoma cells in 4-h chromium release assays. The ability of porcine PBL to lyse these target cells appears to be an age-associated immune response, as evidenced by the relative inability of PBL of pigs less than 4 weeks old to lyse target cells.

A comparison of body and organ weights, physiologic parameters, and pathologic changes in target organs of rats given combinations of exercise, anabolic hormone, and protein supplementation.

This study was engineered to closely mimic the training protocol of a competitive athlete using repetitive exercise sessions, dietary protein supplementation, and anabolic steroids. The length of the study was 37 days. Thirty-four Sprague Dawley male rats Crl:CD(SD)BR in the weight range of 150 to 175 grams were used.

Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase activity in thymocytes of kittens.

Activity of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) was measured in the thymus of 8- to 14-week-old kittens. Microscopic evidence of involution or other morphologic changes were not observed in formalin-fixed hematoxylin and eosin-stained thymic tissue sections. Thymic tissue from young kittens (8 weeks old) had low TdT activity, as determined by enzymatic catalysis or immunoassay procedures.

Insect predator-prey coevolution via enantiomeric specificity in a kairomone-pheromone system.

Insect predators can be guided to their prey by a kairomonal response to the prey pheromone. We found this phenomenon to be highly specific in the bark beetle predatorThanasimus dubius. Olfactory responses and behavioral tests revealed that the predator is guided to its major preyDendroctonusfrontalis by the primary enantiomer of the pheromone of the prey, (1S, 5R)-(-)-frontalin.