Children’s Neurodevelopment and Neurology Treatment Manual – Volume I

About the book:

Over the last decade, advances in health sciences, especially in the field of children’s neurology, have significantly transformed the prognosis for children with developmental challenges and their families. Nowadays, adequate assessments, diagnoses, and treatments give us reason to believe that we can hope for better lives. Organized in four volumes, this treatment manual contains information to provide care for these children. This is a reference work intended as a guide, key to anyone interested in health and care. Its distinctive features are that it is based on scientific evidence and medical experience, and it was written with a deep human warmth.

In the words of Dr. Federico Micheli, this is “a fundamental piece of work produced by doctors Silvia Tenembaum and Nora Grañana, and it clearly explains the state of the art in children’s neurology and neurodevelopment treatment. It is worth noting that it gathers the work of young leading voices in each field of pediatric neurology, to offer those patients at such a vulnerable age the right treatment.”

Excerpt:

In 24 chapters, this first edition of the Children’s Neurodevelopment and Neurology Treatment Manual gathers an interesting wealth of up-to-date information, necessary to rise to the challenge of attending to and caring for children with neurological impairments.

Acknowledgments include over 70 authors—mostly young colleagues both in our country and abroad—, who were selected for their expertise in their respective fields, and who have outstandingly contributed the different approaches to the wide range of neurological and developmental disorders in children and adolescents addressed in this book. Many of these authors became pediatricians under the tutelage of Dr. Natalio Fejerman, who was the first head of the Department of Neurology at the National Pediatric Hospital Prof. Dr. Juan P. Garrahan. Now that 14 years have passed since the latest publication of his masterpiece, Neurología Pediátrica—a treatise cowritten with Dr. Emilio Fernández Álvarez—, may this book pay homage to our mentor.

This treatment manual is organized in a practical way and is divided into four volumes, from I to IV.

The first part of each volume groups the developmental disorders and describes different interventions corresponding to each condition. These are therapy modalities that have allowed for substantial progress in the quality of life and social integration of children with intellectual disabilities or language, sensory-motor, or autism spectrum disorders.

Moreover, this part includes intervention protocols for attention-deficit, executive function, memory, and learning-specific disorders, as well as psychological and psychiatric interventions for children.

The second part of each volume describes the treatments for neurological disorders in children and adolescents, ordered chronologically over several chapters according to their development and clinical manifestations. As an introduction, the chapter on gene therapies provides the basic tools to understand the conceptual and technical foundations of various innovative interventions for several disorders.

The breakthroughs achieved over the last 10 years in therapy modalities for complex diseases—previously thought to be incurable—have radically changed the prognosis for children suffering from them and their families, and fully justify the existence of this treatment manual.

Both the chapters on neurocutaneous syndromes and inborn errors of metabolism include advances in the design of recombinant enzymes and the development of cell and gene therapies that have reshaped the current therapeutic scene and will expand the treatment options for these disorders in the near future (also, these chapters are divided into “Prenatal” and “Perinatal”). The chapter about acquired perinatal disorders discusses the advances made in the treatments to stop and repair brain injuries in full-term and premature newborns, bearing in mind the fact that, historically, we would only “treat” the devastating consequences of early brain injury.

Various conditions and disorders are addressed in the chapters of the “Postnatal disorders” section. For instance, the field of pediatric neuroimmunology has shown significant progress in the past few years, especially on inflammatory demyelinating diseases of the central nervous system. The identification of diagnostic biomarkers as specific antibodies and guiding neuroimaging, the revision of diagnostic criteria, and the development of new therapeutic trials with innovative therapies are some of the advances achieved in recent years and are included in the chapter on immune‑mediated diseases.

Tackling substance use and abuse disorders and the exposure to toxic environmental agents in this book was not up for debate, since both affect neurodevelopment and with growing frequency.

Classic therapeutic tools, as well as new antiepileptic drugs and non-pharmacological interventions, such as the ketogenic diet and the use of the vagus nerve stimulation device, have been carefully and fully explained in the chapter on epilepsy. The following chapters describe the suggested interventions for sleep disorders and non‑epileptic seizures in pediatric patients.

The pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches to neuromotor disorders have been flawlessly developed with a practical focus.

The deeper knowledge on genetic and blood typing have allowed for the development of specific approaches to better treat neuromuscular disorders. New molecules and drug dosage forms provide more comfort and a better quality of life for children with extrapyramidal symptoms.

There is a whole chapter on comprehensive care for strokes in newborns and children/adolescents, including recommendations on the required diagnostic tests. Finally, the chapter on the pediatric management of neurosurgical emergencies explains guidelines on adequate intervention for acute head and spinal cord injury and for pediatric shunt malfunction.

We hope you enjoy reading this manual, which gathers intervention recommendations and therapeutic algorithms, adding classic as well as recent and innovative strategies, and that you can use it as a valuable tool in the daily care of children and adolescents with neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders.

 

Below, by way of illustration, you can find the table of contents of Volume I of the Treatment Manual.

 

Volume I

Neurodevelopment I

Chapter 1. Intellectual development disorders

by Nora Grañana

Intellectual disabilities

by Nora Grañana

Intervention in high intellectual ability

by Alba Richaudeau

Chapter 2. Language disorders

by Verónica Maggio

Intervention in hearing loss

by Marcela Wolman and Astrid Jacob

Chapter 3. Autism spectrum disorders

by Natalia Tringler and Nora Grañana

Pediatric neurology I

Chapter 4. Gene therapy for neurological disorders

by Alejandro Iglesias

Chapter 5. Inborn errors of metabolism

by Consuelo Durand and Nora Atanacio

Neonatal emergencies

by Delfina Marchione

Urea cycle disorders

by Soledad Kleppe

Organic acidemias

by Soledad Kleppe

Maple syrup urine disease

by Soledad Kleppe

Aminoacidopathies. Homocystinuria

by Soledad Kleppe

Phenylketonuria

by Norma Spécola and Mariana Núñez Miñana

Fatty acid oxidation disorders

by Delfina Marchione

Energy metabolism disorders

Treatment of mitochondrial diseases

by Mariana Amina Loos

Disorders of complex molecules

Introduction by Consuelo Durand

Mucopolysaccharidosis

by Norberto Guelbert

Glycogenosis

by Consuelo Durand

Leukodystrophies

by Hernán Amartino

Niemann-Pick disease type C

by Hernán Amartino

Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis type 2 (CLN2)

by Nora Atanacio

Metabolism of minerals and vitamins

by Nora Atanacio

Porphyrias 

by Gustavo Kantor

Metabolic epilepsies

by Consuelo Durand

 

Translated by Mariel Kozynski Waserman - Edited by María del Carmen Propato