Dr Tammy Brady Explains Special Considerations in Pediatric Nephrology

Nephrologists treating children with kidney disease or metabolic syndrome have different challenges and opportunities than when treating adults, according to Tammy Brady, MD, PhD, medical director of the Pediatric Hypertension Program and associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.

Transcript

What are the special considerations when treating children with kidney disease or metabolic syndrome as opposed to adults?

With pediatrics, you’re dealing with a family unit in addition to your pediatric patient, so you not only need to educate and inform the child or adolescent, but you need to educate and inform the family members who are caring for that patient of yours. Then in regards to metabolic syndrome, the specific components of metabolic syndrome, namely obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia, they’re all related to learned health behaviors.

So in peds, or in pediatrics, we have a great opportunity to really get in there early and make a real difference helping them to unlearn some of those unhealthy behaviors and relearn more ideal health behaviors. But also on the other side, you also have that family unit, and some of those behaviors were learned from the adults in their lives, and so you need to work hard to get buy-in from those individuals, because without that buy-in, you’re going to have a lot of challenges being successful with implementing heart-healthy behaviors.