Pediatricians pushing for more aggressive treatments
MIAMI - It is not your imagination, parents. Pediatricians see so many sick children suffering longer and so often that doctors are turning to more aggressive treatments.
Liam Gatmaitan is gearing up for his fifth birthday this month. However, he is on a cycle that his parents and pediatricians want to break.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he gets fevers more often and every prescribed dose of treatment that follows grows stronger too.
"It's the same treatment but I guess that's the way they do a more aggressive treatment," Bryan Gatmaitan, Liam's father said. "In a month or so, (Liam) would visit his doctor like three times versus (before the pandemic) he could go maybe three or six months without seeing a doctor or having any kind of sickness at all."
Members of the American Academy of Pediatrics Florida chapter see widespread problems. That includes kids recovering or who have recovered from COVID-19 infections developing diabetes at younger ages, according to FCAAP President Dr. Thresia Gambon said. Also, some children experience long-term respiratory struggles and anxiety post-COVID-19 infection too, Dr. Gambon said.
While Centers for Disease Control research found roughly 90% of children have had COVID-19, Dr.Gambon thinks there are other factors.
"The kids with respiratory tendencies or might have had a tendency to have asthma or allergies we've had to treat more aggressively," she said.
Dr. Gambon said isolation during the early years of the pandemic limited children's exposure to infectious illnesses. Combined with a liquid amoxicillin shortage, it was hard to handle and treat some conditions that used to be more easily controlled, Dr. Gambon said.
Still, pediatricians said children are resilient and pediatric patients are resilient and should bounce back, eventually.
