Wednesday morning marked a milestone for our program. It was the first multidisciplinary conference to feature a cardiac patient since we started taking care of some of the cardiac service at the beginning of the academic year. I had actually presented a cardiac patient for one of my multi-disc conferences last year and it was noticeably difficult for our residents and even attendings to work through what was going on with that patient because we simply never saw that pathology on the services we managed. Now we are actually starting to interact with this important subset of pathology regularly and our program can only be better for it.
WednesdayIL: DiGeorge (or 22q11.2 deletion) syndrome is a genetic condition associated with numerous cardiac problems, but a particularly pathognomonic one (a symptom that is very characteristic of a certain condition) is an interrupted aortic arch. This is like an extreme form of a coarctation where the aorta not only narrows but pinches entirely off. This is obviously bad, but not immediately incompatible with life as the body will force blood through collateral smaller arteries which widen in caliber as much as they can to accommodate the extra blood flow.
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Thursday we finally got to do a well known pediatrics mainstay: baby formula taste test! A couple of the hospital's registered dieticians gave a brief lecture on the numerous different types of formulas and dietary supplements for babies and toddlers. They then lead us in groups to the adjacent room to try small samples of most kinds of formula. We of course had to run upstairs afterwards for an ice cream chaser.
ThursdayIL: Alimentum tastes like poison. This is one of the least natural formulas in that it is basically pre-digested and thus marketed as hypoallergenic (along with the other big brand version, called Nutramigen). Nearly any baby is able to tolerate this formula so it's kind of our last line of defense before things get much more difficult (IV nutrition, etc). However, these formulas are crazy expensive, very physiologically dissimilar from regular breast milk, and they tastes awful, even to babies. Seriously, though, tastes horrendous. Stay away.
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