Caregiver perspectives of scoliosis surgery for children with cerebral palsy: a qualitative study.

PURPOSE: To explore the perspectives of primary caregivers of children with cerebral palsy (CP) who had spinal surgery for scoliosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews and guided by qualitative description methodology. Participants were caregivers of children with CP aged 5-18, who had undergone spinal surgery for scoliosis in Australia. The research team included a parent with lived experience. RESULTS: Fourteen participants (8 biological mothers), aged 40-49 years, completed online semi-structured interviews. Four themes were identified emerged. Life with a child with CP underpinned all experiences which were founded on familiarity with their child, medical procedures, and hospitalisation. Three subthemes were parents are the experts in knowing their child, children are vulnerable, and impact on caregivers. Theme 2 involved the significance of decision making to proceed with surgery. Theme 3 underscored a need to be prepared for the surgical journey and, in Theme 4, participants spoke of needing to expect the unexpected. CONCLUSION: The findings highlight the importance of understanding caregiver experiences and can help inform health professionals and other families in the decision-making process, preparing for and navigating spinal surgery.

Spinal surgery for scoliosis in children with cerebral palsy is a major surgery and poses substantial challenges for the family.Understanding the magnitude of the decision for families to proceed with surgery will equip health professionals to adequately support and partner with families.Detailed information and extensive preparation are necessary for families to proceed with and navigate surgery, the hospital stay and to return home and to the community.

Children who experience difficulties with learning: mother and child perceptions of social competence.

There is an emphasis on the social competence of children who have difficulties with learning as a significant percentage also experience reduced social skills. Social competence in the classroom is becoming increasingly important as the school curriculum incorporates group work and socially directed activities for purposes of learning. A goal of occupational therapy for children with learning difficulties and their parents is that they 'fit' into their social group and form friendships. While teachers are able to identify social skills that are required for life at school, less is known about how children perceive their interactions. This study aimed to explore social interaction during occupational performance at school and at home from the perception of children with learning difficulties and their mothers. Participants included 10, 8- to 12-year-old children who had difficulties with learning and their 10 mothers. Children were interviewed using semi-structured focus groups. Mothers participated in semi-structured interviews. Four main themes emerged from this study, including the importance of social skills, effects of poor social skills, difficulties with planning and problem solving in social situations and impact of social competence on a child's occupational performance. The study revealed that social participation is perceived to be an integral part of the child's ability to participate in occupational performance, and that children have definite perspectives on the importance of social competence. Children in this study indicated that their social skills were adequate when in an one-to-one situation but not in a group.

Vitamin E intake and risk of esophageal and gastric cancers in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study.

We investigated the association of dietary alpha-tocopherol, gamma-tocopherol and supplemental vitamin E intake with the risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (n = 158), esophageal adenocarcinoma (n = 382), gastric cardia adenocarcinoma (n = 320) and gastric noncardia adenocarcinoma (GNCA; n = 327) in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, a cohort of approximately 500,000 people. Data on dietary and supplemental vitamin E intake were collected using a validated questionnaire at baseline and were analyzed using Cox regression models. Intakes were analyzed as continuous variables and as quartiles. For dietary alpha-tocopherol, we found some evidence of association with decreased esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and increased esophageal adenocarcinoma risk in the continuous analyses, with adjusted hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals of 0.90 (0.81-0.99) and 1.05 (1.00-1.11), respectively, per 1.17 mg (half the interquartile range) increased intake. However, in quartile analyses, the p value for trend was nonsignificant for both these cancers. There was no association between dietary alpha-tocopherol and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma or GNCA. We observed no statistically significant associations with gamma-tocopherol. For supplemental vitamin E, the results were mainly null, except for a significantly lower risk of GNCA with higher doses of supplemental vitamin E. An increase of 71 mg/day (half the interquartile range) in supplemental vitamin E had an hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) of 0.92 (0.85-1.00) and the p value for trend in the quartile analysis was 0.015.

Neural correlates of children's emotion understanding.

This study aimed to develop an EEG paradigm to identify neural correlates of emotion understanding in children. In Experiment 1, children took part in an emotional story task. In Experiment 2, children completed an emotional task and a physical story task Late Positive Potentials (LPP) were demonstrated in response to emotional content in both studies. Together, The study demonstrates the potential value of the LPP as a flexible probe for studying children's emotion understanding and encourages further work into the specificity versus generality of cognitive processes underpinning the LPP in social information processing.