Dietary education and iron deficiency anaemia in the inner city.

OBJECTIVES: To assess if a dietary health education programme could be used within existing health resources to reduce the incidence of iron deficiency anaemia in an inner city population. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Inner city areas of west and south Birmingham. SUBJECTS: A total of 1000 children recorded on the child health computer register. INTERVENTION: Children were recruited at birth and randomised into control and intervention groups. Families in the intervention group received specific health education information at key ages by face to face contact using a range of materials. The control group received standard health education as delivered by the health visitors at the time. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Haemoglobin estimation and iron content of the diet at 18 months of age. RESULTS: A total of 455 children completed the study. Sixty nine (27%) of the control group and 55 (28%) of the intervention group were anaemic as defined by haemoglobin less than 110 g/l. There was no difference in the iron content of the diets offered to the two groups of children. CONCLUSION: In this deprived population we have shown no reduction in anaemia using a targeted nutritional programme and have highlighted the difficulties in conducting health education programmes within the scope of current health resources.

Putting it on tape: audio taped assessment summaries for parents.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the benefits of giving parents tape recorded child development centre assessment report summaries. DESIGN: Prospective randomly allocated study. SETTING: Child development centre, Birmingham Children's Hospital. SUBJECTS: Parents of 113 consecutive children attending for multidisciplinary developmental assessment. OUTCOME MEASURES: Recall of information and use of, and views on, the written and tape recorded summaries. RESULTS: Parents who received the tape recording showed no increase in recall of the summary's content six weeks later. Forty three per cent of English speaking parents favoured the tape recorded summary, as did 89% of Urdu/Punjabi speaking parents. CONCLUSIONS: Tape recorded summaries were popular with parents, but other methods are needed to help parents, especially those whose first language is not English, to understand the implications of multidisciplinary assessment of their child.

Terminal deletion (14)(q32.3): a new case.

A mildly dysmorphic, 2 year old girl with mental retardation was found to have a small de novo terminal deletion of the long arm of chromosome 14, del(14)(q32.3). She was found to have features in common with two previous terminal deletion cases and particularly with the well documented ring 14 syndrome, although seizures, a characteristic feature of ring 14, were notably absent.

Platelet transfusion requirements of children with newly diagnosed lymphoblastic leukaemia.

The platelet transfusion requirements of 70 unselected children with lymphoblastic leukaemia were studied from the time of diagnosis to the achievement of complete remission, or to death if no remission was obtained. Platelets were not transfused unless clinically significant bleeding occurred in association with a platelet count of less than 20.0 x 10(9)/l, and on this basis only 31 transfusions were given to 11 (15%) patients for 17 episodes of apparent or presumed bleeding. No deaths occurred due to haemorrhage, and 67 (95%) patients achieved complete remission. These findings suggest that such children do not need prophylactic platelet transfusions, which are commonly given despite their inherent risks and sequelae.

Poliomyelitis-like illness after acute asthma.

Two children had pain in one arm, followed by weakness and wasting, after an acute exacerbation of bronchial asthma. Similar cases in which a poliomyelitis-like illness was associated with acute asthma have been reported, but the relationship between the two remains conjectural.