‘Course everyone can spot a child with autism. It’s there in the MRCPCH textbooks right? Something about a lack of speech and gaze avoidance and repetitive behaviour. That must be pretty amenable to a spot diagnosis. This is me being a little provocative because hopefully very few, if any paediatricians think like this. Hopefully we […]
Category: Not Picket
A little bit of formula?
Exclusive breastfeeding is regarded by WHO and by most, if not all, paediatric academies, as the ideal for newborns and infants up to 6 months old. It is also recommended that breastfeeding begins as soon as possible after birth. That is why the small pilot study by Flaherman et al is both interesting and controversial. […]
An odd way with odds ratio
Can you spot anything wrong with this graph? It’s from a paper in a major paediatric journal. I’ve removed it from context, because for me it was a helpful lesson in spotting something important. I’ve removed the labelling from the X axis, because I’m going to be a bit unkind about the paper, but in short it […]
When is a result not a result?
Hot on the heels of this great Archimedes on whether or not you should routinely do an LP in infants with a urinary tract infection, comes another publication, covered with a fairly critical review in Journal Watch. What’s fascinating here is both “sides” drawing a conclusion that they can’t draw. […]
Probiotics here, probiotics there, probiotics everywhere
Probiotics are everywhere these days. They are supposed to prevent all kinds of diseases, from infectious to immunological to allergic. Some of the claims have strong evidence, some not. A pilot study by Youngster I, et al, in which the role of probiotics before immunisations is studied, is yet another positive discovery, but there are […]
What’s a normal CSF opening pressure?
Bob has kindly let one or two of us into his Archimedes blog to write about some of the papers we’ve consider for Picket in E&P This letter in the NEJM (Avery RA, Shah SS, Licht DJ, et al. Reference range for cerebrospinal fluid opening pressure in children. N Engl J Med 2010;363:891-3.) gives us, potentially, […]