The 2017 December issue of Pediatrics in Review includes Index of Suspicion award-winning case reports from the American Academy of Pediatrics’ 2016 National Conference and Exhibition. You’ll want to read the report from then-Michigan State University medical student Anjali Garg (10.1542/pir.2016-0223) about a 13-year-old with five days of abdominal pain and two days of vomiting and diarrhea; initially, this sounded like a common presentation of a common viral infection (and there were similarly ill family members at the same time), but this child’s story turned out to have an interesting “twist.” From Morehouse School of Medicine and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Oluwaseun Odewole (10.1542/pir.2017-0038) tells the story of another interesting “twist”, a 6-year-old who required a blood transfusion for a complication of hair braiding.
The case report awards are sponsored by the AAP Section on Pediatric Trainees (SOPT). SOPT, now over 16,000 members strong, is charged with empowering and enabling pediatric trainees across the country to be strong leaders and advocates for the health and well-being of all children. Inherent to this mission is education of our members through sharing of experiences and stories, and the Index of Suspicion competition has been an exciting platform from which to do this. Countless hours are spent collaborating with colleagues and with attending physicians polishing and preparing these cases for submission. By encouraging our members to be engaged locally in development of professional article submissions, we can enhance their education, and in turn, educate the broader pediatric community on various topics in the name of improving child health. The competition has been very popular but was dominated by residents.
The SOPT expanded the competition last year to include specific awards for students, residents, and fellows. A total of 177 case reports were submitted; twenty were selected as finalists by the SOPT review committee. Then, a group of four Pediatrics in Review editorial board members selected a winner for each group of trainee submissions, a difficult task with so many great cases from which to choose.
Who won? The authors and titles of the 2017 case reports are:
- Anachal Sharma from Staten Island University Hospital on “IBD presenting as DVT/PE and Pancreatic Atrophy/Insufficiency”
- Ellen McMahon from the University of Southern California on “Intraventricular hemorrhage in a term neonate”
- Ahmed Aly and Stan Lee from SUNY Downstate Medical Center and Kings County Hospital Center on” Hyoid Hemangioma: A Rapidly Expanding Neck Mass Leading to Cardiopulmonary Arrest”
In addition, we could reasonably say that each author of a submitted case won by gaining experience with the academic process of writing and submitting an abstract for a professional organization. As readers, we all win by learning about interesting presentations of interesting conditions; this growing knowledge can favorably impact our care of similar children we see in our practices. And, most importantly, all the children of the world win as we team up together to expand and spread knowledge about significant pediatric health problems.
