Pediatrics
About
The Department of Pediatrics provides highly specialized healthcare solutions to a wide range of children’s diseases. Its services include allergy/immunology, endocrinology/diabetes, gastroenterology, infectious diseases, nephrology, rheumatology, pulmonology, neonatology, and pediatric intensive care units. Our highly skilled medical professionals promote medical research and education programs, including undergraduate and postgraduate education training, and contribute to the prevention of diseases. The department has many achievements to its credit, including a growing number of referrals and launch of the Virtual Clinic.
The Department of Pediatrics is dedicated to provide state-of-the-art tertiary and quaternary care for a diverse population of chronically and acutely ill infant and children. We are committed to providing outstanding education experiences for the next generation of medical students, residents and clinical fellows in childhood disease prevention, management, research, and advocacy.
Scope of Services:
The Section of General Pediatrics collaborates with the other sections in the Department of Pediatrics to provide a multi-disciplinary, comprehensive, high-quality care to KFSH&RC pediatric patients. The services provided include:
• Clinics for severe combined immune deficiency and other primary immune deficiency diseases.
• Bone marrow transplantation, renal transplantation.
• Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis.
• Automated (cycling) peritoneal dialysis
• Hemodialysis.
• Renal replacement therapy through continuous veno-venous hemodufilteration, invasive renal diagnostic and therapeutic procedures including percutaneous renal biopsy of native and transplanted kidney.
• Renal vein renin sampling.
• Renal arterial angioplasty.
• Treatment of vitamin D dependent type II using high dose calcium infusion.
• Treatment of homozygate hyper cholesterolemia using LDL Apheresis.
• Treatment of OsteogenesisImperfecta using pamidronate infusion.
• Clinics for Pediatric Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection.
• Cystic fibrosis program offers multidisciplinary team approach (family screening with sweat chloride test.
• Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Regulator Gene (CFTR) mutational analysis).
• Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).
• Invitro-Fertilization (IVF) of Cystic Fibrosis (CF).
• Spina Bifida clinic.
• Cleft and lip palate clinic.
Pediatrics - Clinical Excellence:
The general Pediatrics service provides care to all patients aged 14 years and below who present to our hospital with any of the following:
• Certain conditions originating in the perinatal period.
• Certain infectious and parasitic disease.
• Child abuse / suspected child abuse cases.
• Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities.
• Diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs and certain disorders involving the immune mechanism.
• Diseases of the circulatory system.
• Diseases of the digestive system.
• Diseases of the ear and mastoid process.
• Diseases of the eye and adnexa.
• Diseases of the genitourinary system.
• Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue.
• Diseases of the nervous system Diseases of the respiratory system.
• Diseases of the skin and subcutaneous tissue.
• Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases.
• External causes of morbidity and mortality.
• Injury, poisoning, and certain other consequences of external causes.
• Symptoms, signs, and abnormal and laboratory findings.
Pediatrics - Achievements
• The number of referrals of patients with cystic fibrosis is increasing gradually with a range of 15-20 new cases/year. The service cares for a total of > 240 cases, 170 of which are actively followed-up at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre.
• Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) and Invitro-Fertilization (IVF) of Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Our IVF laboratory has adopted Genetic haplotyping to involve CF families with unknown mutations to go for IVF/PGD procedure to have normal children.
• More than 100 patients underwent Family screening with sweat chloride test and Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Regulator Gene (CFTR) mutational analysis.
• Implementation of Vermont Oxford Network which is a non-profit collaboration of health care professionals dedicated to improving the quality and safety of medical care for newborn infants and their families. Established in 1988 and is today comprised of over 700 Neonatal Intensive Care units around the world.
• 65 patients are on Insulin pump therapy program- Treatment of diabetic children with intensive insulin therapy using insulin pump and several new generation insulin analogues.
• The Virtual Clinic in Department of Pediatrics was officially launched on 29 March 2015 Establishment of the International Journal of Adolescent Health.
The general Pediatrics service provides care to all patients aged 14 years and below who present to our hospital with any of the following:
• Certain conditions originating in the perinatal period
• Certain infectious and parasitic disease
• Child abuse / suspected child abuse cases
• Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities
• Diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs and certain disorders involving the immune mechanism
• Diseases of the circulatory system
• Diseases of the digestive system
• Diseases of the ear and mastoid process
• Diseases of the eye and adnexa
• Diseases of the genitourinary system
• Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue
• Diseases of the nervous system
• Diseases of the respiratory system
• Diseases of the skin and subcutaneous tissue
• Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
• External causes of morbidity and mortality
• Injury, poisoning, and certain other consequences of external causes
• Symptoms, signs, and abnormal and laboratory findings
Strategies to Assess and Meet Patient Care Needs:
The section's effort is always to geared towards providing care for all pediatric patients regardless of where they present to our hospital, e.g., emergency room, outpatient clinics, and inpatient wards. The section strives to be always available to all our patients. To meet the needs of our patients, we will continue to provide 24-hour on-call coverage and consultations for the inpatient wards as well as to the emergency room (in cooperation with the consultants of the Department of Pediatrics).
During the weekday, our Section continues to provide outpatient clinic visits like what we have been doing during the previous years, where we see over 4,000 visits per year.
The section also established the Adolescent Medicine service, where residents grant scholarship training abroad in this field to address the healthcare needs of the adolescent population. In addition, we will be initiating the set up for adolescent clinics and adolescent beds in the Children's Hospital for our patients until 18 years of age.
In relation to this, we have also established the Saudi Society for Adolescent Health (SSAH), which is now approved by the Saudi Commission for Health Subspecialties. The SSAH is a multidisciplinary organization committed to improving the physical and psychosocial health and well-being of all adolescents through advocacy, clinical care, health promotion, health service delivery, professional development, and research. Our vision is for the SSAH to be the leader in promoting optimal health and well-being for adolescents and young adults. The Society is committed to ensure the provision of the highest standard of care for our youth, to create greater awareness of the health issues affecting this special population among healthcare and other professionals, policymakers, and youth-serving organizations, and to help parents understand the health care needs of their adolescent children.