Pediatric 2015 Edition

TIRR Memorial Hermann provides a comprehensive Return-to-School Program focused on building strength, increasing independence and regaining skills and confidence after serious illness or injury. The program is tailored to the child and family, with an emphasis on interacting with peers, learning and remembering new information, negotiating the school environment, organizing school assignments, paying attention, physical fatigue, reading and writing, and social and emotional adjustment.

TIRR Memorial Hermann Pediatric Outpatient Rehabilitation now provides intensive and specialized services for children at five locations in the Greater Houston area: at the Kirby Glen Center in southwest Houston (birth and up), at Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital (ages 12 and up), at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center (ages 8 and up), in Sugar Land (birth and up) and at TIRR Memorial Hermann-The Woodlands (birth and up).

Socialization Boot Camp. Social interaction and engagement are critical to successful relationships with others. TIRR Memorial Hermann’s social and communication skills camp for children age 4 to 12 provides a fun, structured and supportive setting for children with a variety of disabilities and disorders. Participants will take part in multisensory activities, interactive fine motor and gross motor game play, storytelling and communication activities, as well as a wrap-up session focused on positive parent-child interaction.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common motor disability in childhood, and spastic CP affects about 80% of people who have the disorder. Population-based studies from around the world report a prevalence estimate of one in 500 live births for spastic CP. While intellect and language skills are usually normal, children with spastic diplegia or hemiplegia often walk on their tiptoes and have trouble relaxing the muscles of their legs sufficiently to have a normal gait. Children with spastic quadriplegia have difficulty moving without the assistance of powered mobility devices.

One intervention currently in use at TIRR Memorial Hermann Pediatric Outpatient Rehabilitation at the Kirby Glen Center is also the subject of a research study led by principal investigator Cullen Gibbs, Ph.D., clinical neuropsychologist and director of the TIRR Memorial Hermann Outpatient Pediatric service line. The therapy is progressive cardiovascular intervention for reducing headache severity and improving cognition in patients who suffer persistent symptoms of concussion.

As the trend toward childhood obesity continues unabated, physicians are treating more children for conditions long associated with adulthood – hypertension, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, fatty liver and insulin resistance. In 2012, more than one-third of children and adolescents in the United States were overweight or obese, according to the most recent figures reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The percentage of obese children age 6 to 11 years increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents age 12 to 19 with obesity increased from 5% to nearly 21% over the same period.

As technology improves, parents have more options for keeping children with motor, sensory or cognitive impairments moving safely and comfortably. At the Outpatient Pediatric Seating and Mobility Clinic at TIRR Memorial Hermann, therapists understand the importance of functional mobility and proper positioning in the child’s development, and work with families to meet their children’s needs, regardless of how complex they are. In addition to manual and power wheelchair evaluations, occupational therapist and clinical coordinator of the seating clinic Myra Vasquez-Romero, OTR, ATP, assesses children for car seats and custom-molded seating systems.

Each year, about 1,400 babies are born with spina bifida in the United States and about 10,000 children will develop cerebral palsy. The majority of these children will face multiple physical and cognitive challenges that affect their early learning and later academic performance, and their independence.  With that in mind, researchers from TIRR Memorial Hermann and the Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) are testing the effectiveness of a parenting program on early learning and motor development of children with spina bifida and children with tone and strength disorders, including cerebral palsy.

TIRR Memorial Hermann is one of seven research sites across the country selected to participate in a clinical trial designed to establish the lower age limit, reliability and validity of outcomes instruments used routinely in spinal cord injury clinical trials. “The results will potentially allow for the inclusion of children and adolescents in important clinical trials that may lead to better outcomes for them and provide methods to evaluate treatment effectiveness in this population,” says Heather Taylor, PhD, director of the Spinal Cord Injury Disability and Research Center at TIRR Memorial Hermann and co-investigator, with Glendaliz Bosques, MD, at the Houston site.