Transformational Pediatrics Children’s Mercy Kansas City

Ana Cohen, PhD, discusses Children's Mercy's cutting edge genetic testing, and how they're improving access by expanding research to rural communities.

Stephanie Burrus, DO, discusses physician burnout, and how Children's Mercy Kansas City's Center for Wellbeing is addressing it at their institution.

Bactrim is a commonly prescribed antibiotic used to treat a variety of conditions, including urinary tract infections, acne and skin and soft tissue infections. The American Academy of Dermatology recently revised its guidelines discouraging the use of Bactrim to treat acne based on research conducted by my next guests – Dr. Jenna Miller, pediatric intensivist, and Dr. Jennifer Goldman, Infectious Diseases, of Children’s Mercy Kansas City.

Children’s Mercy Kansas City, one of the nation’s leading independent pediatric health organizations, announced it is the first health care system to use 5-base HiFi sequencing, the world’s most-advanced genomic sequencing technology from PacBio, in the clinical setting to accelerate diagnoses for even more patients and families.

To accelerate precision medicine for pediatric oncology, Children’s Mercy Kansas City, together with its Research Institute (CMRI), pioneered a new whole-exome-sequencing-based genetic test for all children diagnosed with cancer. While many pediatric research institutions in the country conduct genetic sequencing of tumors, CMRI is one of the few institutions performing both research and clinical sequencing in-house on both tumor and normal DNA samples.

Incredible advances in the care of patients born with single-ventricle heart disease have led to significantly better quality of life and survival. Complex surgical palliation culminating in the Fontan procedure is effective and can allow patients to grow and develop similar to their peers. Unfortunately, changes related to Fontan anatomy lead to stress and increased pressure on the liver, known as Fontan-associated liver disease. These stresses can cause scar tissue to form and—rarely—liver cancer to form. Dedicated liver care is vital to providing Fontan patients with the healthiest life possible.