David Hackam, Johns Hopkins pediatric surgeon-in-chief, discusses necrotizing enterocolitis and research taking place at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Click here to learn more.
Hi, my name is Dr David Hack. Um and I'm the pediatric surgeon in chief and co director of the johNS Hopkins Children's Center and I want to take a minute to talk to you about necrotizing entero colitis or any see a devastating disease of premature infants that affects our most vulnerable Children. Neck, which is a short form for necrotizing colitis often presents completely without warning. And when it occurs, it often catches families and even our care teams completely off guard. And yet here at the johNS Hopkins Children's Center, we've developed teams and approaches to the prevention and the treatment of neck in order to improve outcomes for Children with this terrible condition. The typical presentation of neck occurs in a premature infant who is otherwise quite stable in the neonatal intensive care unit. And then out of the blue develops abdominal distention, the inability to tolerate feeds and often bloody stools and without intervention within 24 hours is either dying or dead. This condition, which occurs often without warning, leaves behind several victims. The first victim, of course, if the child is not able to make it is the delicate precious child themselves. But in addition, the families are victims because oftentimes they've never heard of neck until their own child is dying of this condition. And the third victim here is the health care team themselves who always wish that they could have done more to prevent neck from happening or to have treated the condition. At the johNS Hopkins Children's Center. We have developed approaches to the prevention and treatment of neck based upon advances in science advances that are being made right here. At johNS Hopkins, we've invested in the development of research teams focused entirely and exclusively on understanding what causes neck and in seeking to prevent it from ever happening. These discoveries have identified a switch within the intestine that gets activated by the baby's own bacteria that when turned on, leads to the injury, the inflammation and the necrosis that characterizes this disease. And in our laboratories, we've developed new ways to turn off the switch so as to come up with novel ways to actually cure neck. Neck leaves behind a devastating trail of illness and injury in babies and has a devastating effect on families. Yet through the approach is being taken at the johns Hopkins Children's Center, we've had tremendous success in the lab that we're now starting to bring to the clinic and we're optimistic that through our approach in focusing on Neck, we will one day be able to describe a world in which neck never even exists. Thank you
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