Background: Phototherapy is safe and effective in neonatal hyperbilirubinemia. Despite its worldwide application, questions regarding methods of optimizing efficacy remain unanswered, turning the infant is believed to be one of the methods to improve. Severe neonatal hyperbilirubinemia is associated with kernicterus, condition characterized by athetoid spasticity, gaze and visual abnormalities, and sensory-neural hearing loss. It may also be associated with mental retardation. Aim of this study was conducted to compare the efficacy of intermittent with continuous phototherapy.Methods: Study was conducted in 100 neonates from February 2018 to July 2018 in Sree Balaji medical college and hospital. Inclusion criteria were weight >2000 grams, absence of other concomitant diseases, and hyperbilirubinemia not requiring exchange transfusion. The neonates were randomly divided into two groups. Continuous phototherapy group received phototherapy on and off for 2 hours and half an hour respectively and the intermittent phototherapy group on and then off for one hour. Serum total bilirubin levels were measured in every 36 hours.Results: Mean age of the patients was 3.89±1.83(p=.91) days, mean baseline bilirubin was 17.56mg/dl±1.42 (p=0.36), while the mean follow-up bilirubin was 12.85mg/dl±1.65 (p=.95), and the mean difference between the baseline and follow-up bilirubin was 4.7 mg/dl±1.19 (p=.32). For group A and B babies, the mean difference between the baseline and follow-up bilirubin was 4.78 mg/dl±1.20 (p=.32) and 4.63mg/dl±1.18(p=0.32) respectively. The difference between the mean age, mean baseline bilirubin, mean follow-up bilirubin, and the mean decrease in bilirubin for both the groups was statistically not significant.Conclusions: Intermittent and continuous phototherapies were found to be equally effective for reducing neonatal hyperbilirubinemia.

Acute pancreatitis following viral infection is rare in children. Acute pancreatitis complicating viral infections has been described in the form of isolated case reports and small series. The commonly implicated viral infections have been coxsackie virus, hepatitis viruses, mumps, varicella, herpes simplex and cytomegalovirus. However, the etio- pathogenesis of pancreatitis in viral infections remains unclear. Also, the natural history of such pancreatitis has not been adequately studied. Here we present a case of acute pancreatitis following dengue infection.

Scrub typhus is an acute febrile illness which is noted in children increasingly nowadays but it is often underdiagnosed mostly due to its atypical presentation. In this report, we present a case of 10 years old boy, who was initially diagnosed as lobar pneumonia but later confirmed to be suffering from scrub typhus infection. The child had typical clinical as well as radiological features of community-acquired pneumonia. Further investigations were done due to non-response to initial treatment which led to the diagnosis of scrub typhus infection. Specific treatment with doxycycline showed dramatic response and the child improved clinically. So it is absolutely essential for the treating physician to have high index of suspicion of this re-emerging infectious disease.

No abstract available Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health, 2023: 52(2): 209-212